DEC  16  1918 


BR    121    .F6    1918 

Fiske,  Charles,  1868-1942 

The  experiment  of  faith 


The  Experiment  of  Faith 


DEC 

The  Experiment 
Faith 

A  Plea  for  Reality  in  Religion 


By  the  Right  Reverend 
CHARLES  FISKE,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

Bishop  Coadjutor  of  Central  New  York 

Author  of  "Back  to  Christ"  "Sacrifice  and 

Service"  "The  Religion  of  the 

Incarnation"  etc. 


New  York  Chicago 

Fleming    H.    Revell    Company 

London  and  Edinburgh 


Copyright,  191 8,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


New  York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  17  North  Wabash  Ave. 
London :  2 1  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh:      75    Princes    Street 


Foreword 

THE  writer  was  university  preacher 
recently  in  a  great  collegiate  town. 
He  was  feeling  his  way  towards 
the  message  he  was  to  give  the  young  men 
and  women  who  would  hear  him  the  fol- 
lowing week.  He  spoke  to  several  of  the 
students  about  it  and  to  one  member  of  the 
faculties. 

One  of  the  students,  with  the  frankness 
of  youth,  replied :  "  Preach  on  anything  ex- 
cept  the  war;  we  have  been  '  fed  up '  on 
that."  Another,  a  rather  serious-minded 
young  Churchman,  said :  "  Suppose  for  a 
change  you  give  us  some  straight  Chris- 
tianity; we  get  mighty  little  of  it  from  the 
ordinary  college  preacher." 

The  enquirer  took  these  suggestions  to 
his  faculty  friend  and  asked  what  he  made 
of  the  criticisms  that  lay  beneath  the  sug- 
gestions. As  he  interpreted  the  thought  of 
the  men,  it  would  appear  that  many  people 
in  these  days  are  thinking  about  spiritual 
things  more  seriously  than  ever  before. 
They  want  to  find  their  way  to  some  definite 
5 


6  FOEEWOED 

Christian  belief.  They  ought  to  be  shown 
some  definite  Christian  work.  "  It  is  true/' 
said  the  speaker,  "  that  we  have  had  a  pretty 
steady  stream  of  preaching  about  the  Great 
War.  One  after  another  the  clergy  of  every 
faith  have  come  and  philosophized  about  it; 
one  after  another  they  have  moralized  over 
its  lessons  and  made  appeals  to  patriotism 
or  religion.  Of  course  we  cannot  get  away 
from  the  subject.  It  colours  all  our  think- 
ing. But  what  we  need  is  not  so  much 
direct  preaching  about  the  war  as  preaching 
which  shows  that  the  man  who  speaks  is 
conscious  of  our  thoughts  and  longs,  with 
all  his  soul,  to  give  us  some  light  on  faith's 
pathway  in  these  dark  and  troublous  days. 
The  war  brings  many  spiritual  problems  to 
the  front.  They  are  the  same  old  problems 
we  have  always  had  with  us,  only  now  they 
stand  out  more  sharply  defined.  Why 
should  we  not  be  told  something  of  the  an- 
swer of  Christian  faith  to  such  questions — 
always  with  the  war  in  mind,  but  never  with 
the  war  dragged  in?  Try  it"  And  then 
he  added:  "And  if  you  can  show  us  how 
faith  is  possible  and  what  can  be  said  to 
help  the  man  who  gropes  towards  it  falter- 
ingly,  so  much  the  better." 

The    substance    of    these    chapters    was 


FOEEWOED  7 

given  in  the  addresses  which  followed 
during  that  week  of  preaching.  Some  of 
them  have  been  twice  repeated  since,  very 
informally,  in  conferences  for  college  men. 
Their  apparent  helpfulness,  in  such  in- 
formal use,  is  the  excuse  for  their  publica- 
tion in  somewhat  fuller  form.  They  could 
not,  of  course,  deal  with  all  the  questions 
suggested  by  our  college  friend;  they  only 
drive  home  one  moral.  They  are,  it  will  be 
seen,  an  appeal  to  men  now  outside  the 
Church  to  seek  to  find  their  way  in — both 
for  their  own  sakes  and  for  the  Church's 
sake. 

The  pathway  of  faith  to  which  they  point 
is  no  new  road;  but  so  many  have  failed  to 
walk  it!  This  essay  is  a  plea  for  reality  in 
religion.  Its  theme  is  this:  that  faith  is 
not  mere  intellectual  assent  to  a  creed,  it  is 
the  consent  of  the  whole  man,  mind,  con- 
science, heart,  will,  to  the  will  of  God  as 
revealed  in  Jesus  Christ.  Because  faith, 
essentially,  is  receptivity  of  soul,  to  know 
the  truth  we  must  strive  to  live  the  truth. 
The  vital  requirement  of  religion,  there- 
fore, is  fidelity  to  present  faith,  obedience 
to  accepted  truth.  As  we  live  true  to  the 
truth  we  know,  we  pass  on  to  larger  truth 
and  richer  belief.     Faith  is   "the  seeking 


8  FOEEWOED 

spirit  of  desire  " — the  spirit  that  obeys,  ap- 
propriates and  uses  and  so  comes  to  trust 
and  believe. 

That  being  the  case,  the  believer  in  Jesus 
Christ  comes  to  his  faith  only  through 
genuineness  and  sincerity  of  life.  He  who 
would  believe  must  be  absolutely  real  in 
following.  The  book  attempts  to  deal 
frankly  and  sympathetically  with  the  diffi- 
culties of  faith  which  keep  many  men  out- 
side the  Christian  fellowship,  but  it  harks 
back  constantly  to  the  demand  for  sincerity 
of  discipleship  as  the  one  pathway  to  belief. 
If,  in  doing  this,  the  obligations  of  religion 
are  pressed  home  somewhat  insistently  for 
the  "  unattached  followers  "  of  Christ,  they 
will  not  complain  when  they  discover  that 
the  shortcomings  of  Churchmen  are  dealt 
with  no  less  frankly  and  with  equally  plain 
speaking. 

C.  F. 

Syracuse,  N.  F.i 


Contents 


I. 

Unattached  Followers 

ii 

II. 

The  Ultimate  Test 

20 

III. 

The  Average  Man's  Religion 

30 

IV. 

The  Other  Half . 

42 

V. 

Letting  Oneself  Go     . 

*      49 

VI. 

The  Forgotten  God 

58 

VII. 

The  Joyous  Yea    . 

69 

VIII. 

A  Radiating  Gospel     . 

78 

IX. 

The  Essence  of  Prayer 

92 

X. 

The  Unveiling  of  Deity 

107 

XI. 

The  Fact  of  Immortality    . 

123 

XII. 

Where  the  Sky  Begins 

136 

XIII. 

Communicated  Character    . 

.     146 

XIV; 

Judgment  Days  of  God 

.     156 

XV. 

The  Demand  for  Reality    . 

.     169 

The  Experiment  of  Faith 


UNATTACHED  FOLLOWERS 

JESUS  CHRIST  has  many  unattached 
followers,  men  of  strong  religious  feel- 
ings and  convictions  who  are  not  en- 
rolled anywhere  as  Christian  believers  and 
feel  that  they  cannot  honestly  identify 
themselves  with  any  church.  Such  men 
are  found  in  every  class  of  society.  We 
run  across  them  often  among  working  men, 
who  are  more  and  more  growing  away 
from  institutional  Christianity.  We  meet 
them,  with  greater  frequency,  in  the  busi- 
ness and  professional  world,  where  minds 
are  keenest  and  thinking  clearest.  Their 
presence  is  specially  forced  upon  our  atten- 
tion in  these  days  of  war.  All  around  us  are 
men  who  are  consecrating  their  lives  to  the 
service  of  humanity,  who  are  doing  Christ's 
work  and  yet  have  not  the  stimulus  of  fel- 
lowship in  Christ's  army.  That  is  our  loss 
ii 


12        THE  EXPERIMENT  OF  FAITH 

as  well  as  theirs,  and  it  is  hard  to  say  for 
which  of  us  the  loss  is  the  more  tragic. 

One  of  the  big  problems  of  the  Church 
to-day  is  the  man  outside.  So  often  he  is 
the  very  man  we  need  inside.  What  keeps 
him  out?  How  shall  we  get  him  in?  What 
shall  be  the  terms  of  admission?  He  is 
asking  these  questions  as  seriously  as  we 
are.  The  very  fact  that  he  does  ask  is  proof 
that  he  wants  to  come — if  he  can. 

We  are  concerned  now  particularly  with 
the  man  who  does  want  to  come.  There 
are  other  men  outside  who  have  little  or 
no  interest  in  the  matter.  Some  are  quite 
satisfied  to  stay  outside  because  they  have 
drifted  into  a  sort  of  "  phariseeism  of  the 
publican."  No;  they  do  not  belong  any- 
where— why  should  they?  There  are  so 
many  hypocrites  in  the  churches  already — 
they  say.  Others  again  (so  we  are  ex- 
pected to  believe)  are  so  faithful  to  their 
ideals  that  they  consider  it  a  sufficient  ex- 
cuse for  not  belonging  to  any  church  to 
state  somewhat  violently  that  they  dis- 
approve (as  who  does  not?)  of  there  being 
so  many  churches  to  choose  from.  Still 
others  cannot  see  the  need  of  a  church  at  all. 
In  a  time  of  war,  when  millions  of  men  are 
massed  on  many  battle  fronts,  they  believe, 


UNATTACHED  FOLLOWEKS  13 

apparently,  that  the  real  way  to  prosecute 
the  Christian  warfare  successfully  is  to  fight 
a  guerilla  campaign  and  so  they  refuse  to 
serve  in  any  division  of  the  already  pathet- 
ically divided  army  of  Christ!  These  hope- 
lessly antiquated  folk  may  be  left  out  of 
reckoning  for  the  present.  They  are  not 
really  thinking  men.  They  think  they  are 
thinking,  when  actually  they  are  only  "  re- 
arranging their  prejudices." 

We  have  another  type  of  men  in  mind 
now — that  large  body  of  men,  keen  of  con- 
science and  deeply  religious  at  heart,  who 
are  not  able  to  accept  the  formulated 
standards  of  faith  as  set  forth  in  the  creeds. 
They  are  usually  very  quiet  about  it.  They 
say  little,  unless  some  one  else  starts  the 
discussion.  They  speak,  then,  less  in  de- 
fense and  protest  than  in  sincere  regret. 
They  would  like  to  believe  more  if  they 
could.  They  feel  that  there  ought  to  be  a 
place  for  them,  even  if  they  cannot  believe. 
Some  of  them  have  a  very  mistaken  notion 
of  the  faith  they  cannot  accept.  They  are 
really  rejecting  something  which  is  not 
Christianity.  For  there  is  a  wide  difference 
between  doctrinal  Christianity  as  popularly 
understood  and  actual  Christian  orthodoxy. 
We  rightly  ask  that  he  who  denies  Chris- 


14       THE  EXPEBIMENT  OF  FAITH 

tianity  shall  be  at  pains  to  discover  what  it 
is  he  is  denying. 

Yet  there  are  multitudes  of  other  men 
who  have  more  or  less  carefully  studied  the 
Christian  creeds  and  for  one  reason  or 
another  cannot  honestly  and  without  equiv- 
ocation accept  their  definitions.  To  find  a 
message  for  such  men  has  always  been  a 
challenge  to  Christian  thought.  It  is  more 
than  that — it  is  a  call  to  sympathetic  and 
appreciative  effort.  If  we  could  bring  them 
to  kneel  with  us  at  the  Lord's  Table,  we 
should  both  gain  by  their  coming.  It  is  our 
shame  that  we  have  not  realized  before  how 
much  we  need  them.  It  is  their  loss  that 
they  have  not  sought  with  more  patience 
and  humility  to  find  their  way  to  Christian 
fellowship. 

There  are,  of  course,  difficulties  on  both 
sides.  Believers  have  failed,  possibly,  to 
understand  the  real  longing,  sometimes  a 
very  hunger  of  the  heart  for  faith,  in  men 
who  have  not  found  in  any  Christian  com- 
munion a  sufficiently  simple  test  of  fellow- 
ship. There  is  no  church,  giving  them  the 
warm,  living  faith  they  long  for,  whose 
standards  they  can  fully  accept.  There  is 
none  where  they  can  believe  more  than  half 
that  is  taught  and  preached — and  when  they 


UNATTACHED  FOLLOWEES  15 

say  this  they  say  it  more  in  sorrow  than  in 
criticism. 

There  was  a  time  when  the  Church  gave 
such  men  small  sympathy.  Their  lack  of 
faith  was  ascribed  to  the  wiles  of  Satan ;  the 
test  of  orthodoxy  was  rigidly  applied;  the 
doubter  was  kept  out,  or  cast  out,  with 
scorn. 

The  fault  was  not  all  on  the  side  of 
the  conservative  and  the  orthodox.  The 
heterodox  were  just  as  proficient  in  passion- 
ate denunciation,  certainly  were  as  dogmatic 
in  their  denials  as  the  convinced  theologian 
was  dogmatic  in  his  assertions.  That  tone 
and  temper  of  mind  has  not  altogether 
passed.  Witness  Mr.  Wells's  theological 
acrimony  in  his  God  the  Invisible  King. 
The  entertaining  author  thinks  he  has 
discovered  God.  Like  Mr.  Chesterton's 
yachtsman  (who  slightly  miscalculated  his 
course  and  landed  on  what  he  supposed  to 
be  an  uncharted  island  of  the  South  Seas, 
only  to  learn  in  the  morning  that  he  had 
beached  his  boat  near  Brighton),  Mr.  Wells 
has  really  discovered  nothing.  He  has 
simply  been  groping  after  truths  which  have 
long  been  taught  in  Christian  pulpits,  had 
he  but  known  it.  The  new  and  strange 
thing,   however,   in   all   the   discussion   his 


16        THE  EXPEEIMENT  OP  FAITH 

theme  has  aroused,  is  the  appreciative  sym- 
pathy and  kindliness  with  which  Christian 
critics  have  received  his  philosophizing,  con- 
trasted with  the  irritating  irreverence  of  the 
philosopher's  own  lively  attacks  upon  be- 
liefs which  these  same  Christians  hold  most 
sacred.  It  is  just  as  unquestionably  true 
that  in  other  days  all  the  theologians  were 
not  black-hearted  heresy  hunters  and  all  the 
heterodox  disputants  saints  with  souls  as 
white  as  angels'  wings.  Bitterness  was  not 
all  in  the  camp  of  the  orthodox. 

Nevertheless,  undeniably,  the  conscien- 
tious objector  to  current  theological  belief 
usually  found  little  sympathy  or  understand- 
ing. His  questionings  were  received  in 
horrified  silence ;  his  denials  met  with  indig- 
nant denunciations.  Later,  though  the 
tests  of  orthodoxy  were  not  applied  so 
promptly  nor  so  rigidly,  there  was  slight 
appreciation  of  the  position  of  the  perplexed 
enquirer  and  less  honest  effort  to  face  his 
difficulties.  Naturally,  therefore,  he  be- 
came hardened  in  doubt.  We  are  learning 
now  to  understand  something  of  the  real 
goodness  of  many  a  modern  Thomas. 

Yet,  what  are  we  to  do  with  him?  Sup- 
pose we  abandon  all  credal  requirements, 
including  in  the  Church  all  who  express  a 


UNATTACHED  FOLLOWEKS  17 

desire  to  follow  the  Lord  Jesus,  without 
enquiring  what  they  believe  about  Him. 
It  might  be  conceivable  that  we  should  so 
admit  men  to  church  fellowship  on  the 
simplest  possible  profession  of  discipleship. 
Some  Christian  communions  are  already- 
doing  it.  They  are  not  growing  any  more 
rapidly  than  other  Christian  bodies.  Cer- 
tainly they  are  not  manifesting  a  more  vital 
Christian  activity,  with  a  largeness  of 
vision  and  a  world-wide  mission  such  as 
attracts  men  of  the  great  heart. 

The  Church  rightly  feels  that  its  very  life 
depends  upon  its  setting  forth  fully  and 
convincingly  the  deposit  of  faith  which  it 
believes  it  has  received.  And  not  its  life 
only — that  gives  the  wrong  emphasis — but 
the  life  it  lives  to  give.  Surely  it  is  not 
unreasonable  so  to  regard  its  obligation. 
This  conception  of  duty  arises  out  of  the 
profound  conviction  that  the  ideal  which  we 
call  the  Christian  life  sprang  out  of  the 
Christian  faith.  "We  cannot  unravel  the 
threads  which  knit  the  character  which  we 
know  in  its  developed  form  as  Christian, 
from  the  creed  which  appears,  at  every 
single  point  of  the  character,  as  its  inherent 
and  vital  background."  Dogma  is  not 
merely  preached  as  dogma.     We  believe  it 


18        THE  EXPEEIMENT  OP  FAITH 

to  be  practically  impossible  to  maintain  for 
long  the  moral  beauty  of  the  Christian  char- 
acter without  its  doctrinal  basis.  Is  not 
militant  Prussia  the  natural  fruit  of  a  hybrid 
Christianity,  with  a  dash  of  Nietzsche 
thrown  in?  "The  thing  committed  to  us 
is  the  whole  mind  of  Christ;  and  Christ  can- 
not be  divided."  Men  may  be  unconscious 
of  the  influence,  but  the  Christian  life  they 
are  trying  to  live  has  survived  only  in  a 
Christian  atmosphere  of  faith.  Their 
strength  is  partly  an  inheritance;  partly  it 
has  been  imbibed  from  the  "  diffused  Chris- 
tianity "  which  has  silently  moulded  their 
thoughts  and  quickened  their  consciences 
from  youth  on. 

Faith  is  not  mere  intellectual  assent; 
it  is  the  consent  of  the  whole  man  (mind, 
conscience,  heart,  will)  to  the  will  of  God  as 
revealed  in  Jesus  Christ.  The  end  of  faith 
and  worship  is  life.  If  this  is  so,  the  Chris- 
tian faith  is  vitally  necessary.  Its  presenta- 
tion should  be  as  simple  as  possible,  reduced 
to  real  essentials;  but  in  these  essential 
elements  it  must  be  consistently  presented 
and  fully  preserved,  because  out  of  it  springs 
the  Christian  character.  In  it  also  is  ex- 
pressed a  definite  loyalty  to  Christianity's 
Founder.     The  essence  of  the  creed  is  this 


UNATTACHED  FOLLOWEKS  19 

expression  of  allegiance  to  Christ.  He  is 
its  center  and  core.  Once  this  is  recognized, 
he  who  would  follow  Christ  will  at  least 
approach  humbly  and  prayerfully,  patiently 
and  sympathetically,  to  the  examination  of 
its  simple  fundamental  statements  about 
the  Master  for  whom  they  profess  reverent 
loyalty  and  to  whom  they  would  give  faith- 
ful service. 

When  this  has  been  said,  we  have  at  least 
reached  a  new  point  of  departure.  The 
realization  of  our  common  purpose  may, 
perhaps,  lead  those  who  would  consecrate 
their  lives  to  the  work  of  Christ  to  examine 
afresh  the  faith  of  Christians.  The  doc- 
trines of  Christianity  are  the  logical  ex- 
ponents of  its  facts,  and  the  facts  are  the 
basis  of  its  life.  We  accept  the  doctrines, 
not  as  mere  items  of  information,  but  as 
interpretations  of  that  life — the  life  to  which 
we  would  re-dedicate  ourselves  in  these 
days  of  splendid  service;  the  life  we  must 
try  to  understand  if  we  would  also  strive  to 
imitate  it. 


II 

THE  ULTIMATE  TEST 

WHAT  is  religion's  essential  re- 
quirement, its  ultimate  test?  If 
we  say  that  doctrinally  it  cannot 
be  more  than  the  simplest  Christian  creed — 
the  short,  unelaborated,  apostolic  statement 
of  Christian  truths  as  the  logical  exponents 
of  Christian  facts — may  it  be  less  than  that? 
Shall  we  gladly  allow  the  freest  possible 
interpretation  of  the  creed?  Even  though 
the  Church  maintain  "  the  deposit "  as  its 
own  standard,  must  it  always  be  required, 
at  the  outset,  of  all  who  would  come  into 
the  fold? 

We  cannot  dismiss  with  a  flat  denial  those 
who  would  so  simplify  the  requirements  for 
lay  membership.  They  would  still  urge 
that  doubtful  believers  be  received  into 
membership  and  communion,  in  order  that 
they  may  grow  into  fuller  understanding 
and  acceptance  of  the  Church's  doctrine, 
just  as  we  receive  disciples  whose  ethical 
standards  are  unformed  and  whose  exhibi- 
20 


THE  ULTIMATE  TEST  21 

tion  of  Christian  virtues  is  very  imperfect, 
meanwhile  training  them  to  become  more 
consistent  Christians. 

The  purpose  of  this  essay  is  not  to  bal- 
ance arguments  over  conflicting  views  as  to 
doctrinal  requirements  for  Christian  fellow- 
ship ;  but  to  insist  that  there  is  one  essential 
requirement  which  must  be  pressed  home, 
whether  a  man  believes  much  or  little. 
Essentially  faith  is  receptivity  of  soul.  It 
is  the  spirit  which  trusts,  believes,  obeys, 
appropriates.  The  first  enquiry,  therefore, 
which  we  address  to  the  troubled  questioner 
has  to  do  not  with  the  quantity  of  his  faith, 
but  with  its  quality.  If  he  is  to  be  received 
into  Christian  fellowship,  is  he  at  least  in  the 
mood  to  desire  larger  and  richer  belief? 

Something  like  that  we  ask,  or  should  ask, 
of  morally  imperfect  converts.  We  must 
not  practically  make  it  possible  for  anybody, 
with  an  easy  conscience  or  a  fat  pocket- 
book,  to  become  a  church  member  some- 
where— though  the  rivalry  of  sectarian 
Christianity  has  so  broken  down  moral  dis- 
cipline, that  often  it  would  appear  that  this 
has  become  the  actual  situation.  What  we 
ask  of  the  man  of  imperfect  Christian 
practice  is  this:  Do  you  want  to  do  better? 
What  we  must  ask  of  the  man  of  incomplete 


22        THE  EXPERIMENT  OF  FAITH 

Christian  faith  is  phrased  in  similar  lan- 
guage: Do  you  want  to  believe  more?  If 
you  desire  faith,  you  must  have  receptivity 
of  soul.  Are  you  sure,  then,  that  you  want 
to  believe?  Have  you  a  mind — no,  have 
you  a  heart — open  to  the  light?  Tennyson 
puts  it  in  some  stanzas  of  In  Memoriam,  two 
lines  of  which  are  often  quoted  out  of  their 
context : 

Perplext  in  faith,  but  pure  in  deeds, 

At  last  he  beat  his  music  out. 

There  lives  more  faith  in  honest  doubt, 
Believe  me,  than  in  half  the  creeds. 

He  fought  his  doubts  and  gathered  strength, 
He  would  not  make  his  judgment  blind, 
He  faced  the  spectres  of  the  mind 

And  laid  them :  thus  he  came  at  length 

To  find  a  stronger  faith  his  own. 

When  Lincoln  was  accused  of  being  an 
infidel,  he  answered  with  simple  directness 
and  gave  some  account  of  his  earlier  strug- 
gles towards  faith.  "  I  do  not  claim/'  he 
added,  "  that  all  my  doubts  have  been  swept 
away.  It  may  be  my  lot  to  go  on  in  a 
twilight,  feeling  my  way  as  doubting 
Thomas  did;  but  in  my  poor  effort  I  bear 
with  me,  as  I  go  on,  that  seeking  spirit  of 
desire  for  faith  which  was  with  the  man  of 


THE  ULTIMATE  TEST  23 

olden  time  who  cried,  '  Lord,  I  believe ;  help 
Thou  mine  unbelief.'  " 

Here  is  real  faith,  even  though  it  be  not 
the  fully  formulated  faith  of  a  professed 
Christian.  What  we  need  is  to  accept  it,  in 
full  appreciation  of  its  vitality,  as  a  step  to- 
wards "  the  faith  " — that  is,  towards  the 
point  where  the  seeker  finds  in  the  formu- 
lated doctrine  the  answer  to  all  his  long- 
ings. If  the  way  can  be  made  easy  by  any 
free  interpretation  of  the  creed  which  does 
not  deny  the  historic  sense  outright,  so 
much  the  better;  but  what  is  most  needed, 
and  what  he  most  has  the  right  to  ask,  is  a 
full  appreciation  of  the  vitality  of  his  present 
faith,  a  glad  acceptance  of  it  as  that  which 
lies  at  the  core  of  Christian  experience,  a 
ready  confidence  that  if  it  is  genuine  he  will 
be  guided  into  other  truth. 

Is  it  genuine?  That  is  the  point.  Has 
he,  indeed,  the  spirit  which  trusts,  appro- 
priates, obeys?  May  it  not  be  that  his  fail- 
ure to  go  on  to  fuller  truth  is  due  to  a  flaw 
in  his  present  self-surrender?  The  child- 
like spirit  is  of  the  very  essence  of  faith. 
The  modern  Nicodemus  must  be  born  again. 
He  is  a  good  man  who  cannot  perceive  the 
Christ  because  too  well  satisfied  with  him- 
self. 


24        THE  EXPEKIMENT  OP  FAITH 

Once  more:  receptive  faith  means  not 
simply  the  spirit  of  desire,  but  the  spirit  of 
obedience.  Nicodemus  must  try  to  live 
the  truth  he  knows — and  try  hard  enough  to 
lose  some  of  his  self-confidence.  "  I  do  not 
vex  myself  any  more  with  questions  I  can- 
not answer,"  says  J.  R.  Green;  "I  am  not 
impatient,  as  I  used  to  be,  with  vagueness 
and  dimness.  I  see  that  we  must  live,  to 
know ;  to  know  the  right,  we  must  live  the 
right." 

Here  we  have  a  test  that  cuts,  too,  across 
the  path  of  the  man  whose  statement  of  his 
belief  is  letter  perfect,  while  yet  he  has 
never,  apparently,  made  his  intellectual  ac- 
ceptance of  "  the  faith "  lead  him  on  to 
"  faith  "  in  its  more  vital  sense.  Has  he 
been  putting  the  chief  emphasis  on  a  form 
of  sound  words,  instead  of  stressing  the 
spiritual  values  of  the  great  truths  which 
the  creeds  declare? 

That,  after  all,  is  the  main  thing — to  find, 
not  merely  the  contents,  but  the  content 
of  the  creed.  We  must  make  it  clear  be- 
yond peradventure  that  this  ethical  and 
spiritual  content  of  Christian  truth  is  its 
raison  d'etre.  There  must  be  no  insistence 
on  doctrinal  tests  without  making  plain  the 
reason    for    safeguarding    doctrine.      That 


THE  ULTIMATE  TEST  25 

reason  has  ever  been  the  same :  belief  is  not 
a  bare  acceptance  of  facts,  it  is  an  atmos- 
phere to  be  breathed,  a  life  to  be  lived;  it 
becomes  real  faith  only  when  it  colours  all 
our  conduct. 

It  makes  a  vast  difference  the  moment  we 
begin  to  put  the  creed  that  way.  It  means 
that  we  take  it  as  a  working  hypothesis  and 
try  it  out  in  life  by  putting  it  to  the  test  of 
practical  experiment.  Anything  that  meets 
this  test  is  vital. 

I  believe  in  God — what  does  it  mean  but 
that  I  start  with  the  assumption  that  there 
is  a  Moral  Governor  over  the  universe  and 
that  I  mean  to  acknowledge  His  will  as  the 
moral  law  of  conduct?  That  is  something 
vital.  Try  it  out  and  see  whether  it  does 
not  give  life  a  new  colouring.  Hard  to 
believe  in  a  divine  moral  government  in 
these  days?  Yes,  of  course.  But  give  it  a 
trial.  Let  your  thought  play  around  it  and 
your  imagination  take  hold  of  it.  Before 
long  you  will  discover  within  yourself,  in 
the  white  light  of  this  truth  you  are  testing, 
the  explanation  of  the  problem  of  evil  with- 
out. In  your  own  lifelong  disobedience  you 
will  find  the  root  and  source  of  the  world's 
moral  disaster;  and  knowing  so  positively 
the  still  insistent  demand  of  the  moral  law 


26        THE  EXPERIMENT  OF  FAITH 

you  will  grow  steadily  more  sure  of  the 
Moral  Governor.  If  we  love  justice  and 
hate  evil,  is  it  not  God's  own  spirit  that  has 
taught  us? 

Then,  next,  you  will  need  God  the 
Father — Some  One  who  knows  and  cares 
and  loves  and  pardons.  Well,  you  try  out 
that  article  of  faith.  You  begin  to  act  to- 
wards God  with  an  understanding  that 
Fatherhood  implies  sonship  and  that  love 
desires  a  return  of  love.  And  next:  Jesus 
Christ.  Before  you  deny  His  divinity,  try 
to  find  out  the  ethical  significance  of  such  a 
faith.  What  does  it  mean  but  the  realiza- 
tion of  the  divine  in  us;  else  how  could  God 
and  humanity  come  together  in  the  Person 
of  the  Christ?  What  does  it  mean  but  a 
new  appreciation  of  the  brotherhood  of  men 
in  Christ,  an  understanding  of  the  inefface- 
able relation  between  man  and  man?  Try 
that  out  in  all  human  relations.  Sink  your 
differences  and  look  for  the  fundamental 
virtues  common  to  all  men.  Finding  them, 
trace  them  up  to  Christ  and  see  how  they 
reach  their  perfection  in  Him,  the  manliest 
of  men,  who  embodies  and  fulfills  all  your 
ideals.  There  is  no  article  of  the  creed 
which  cannot  be  tried  out  that  way,  with  the 
possible  exception  of  the  Virgin  Birth,  and 


THE  ULTIMATE  TEST  27 

even  there  the  difficulty  disappears  when  we 
take  the  fact  in  its  right  order.  But  of 
that  later. 

Enough  has  been  said  to  indicate  our  be- 
lief that  the  Christian  creed  is  really  the 
foundation  of  the  Christian  character.  The 
one  is  built  upon  the  other.  When  one 
goes,  the  other,  sooner  or  later,  will  surely 
go  with  it.  And  enough  has  been  said, 
also,  to  point  out  faith's  open  gateway. 
What  is  the  essential  religious  requirement? 
It  is  very  simple :  just  this,  that  each  bit  of 
faith,  however  small,  be  used;  each  accepted 
truth  thoroughly  tried  out.  That  means 
that  we  go  from  "  faith  to  faith,"  step  by 
step.  It  is  the  pragmatic  test:  does  it 
work?  But  it  is  more  than  that,  it  is  the 
way  of  further  knowledge.  Each  truth 
translated  into  life  will  lead  to  larger  truth. 
"  He  that  willeth  to  do  His  will  shall  know 
of  the  teaching  whether  it  be  of  God." 

It  does  seem  that  this  is  the  real  appeal 
to  be  made  to  the  men  we  have  had  in  mind, 
men  naturally  better  by  far  than  some  of  us 
who  have  been  admitted  to  church  member- 
ship, men  who  stay  out  just  because  their 
consciences  are  tender  and  they  will  not 
come  in  unless  they  can  be  quite  sure  of 
coming  honestly,  without  professing  more 


28        THE  EXPEKIMENT  OF  FAITH 

than  they  believe;  men  whom  the  Church 
sorely  needs  because  they  are  men  of 
splendid  intellect,  large  ability  and  conse- 
crated purpose  who  could  bring  to  the 
Church's  problems  breadth  of  vision  and 
greatness  of  achievement.  We  need  them. 
We  want  them  to  come  to  us  if  they  possibly 
can.  Conscious  that  they  have,  possibly, 
capacities  for  a  larger  and  finer  Christianity 
than  our  own,  we  yet  humbly  believe  that 
we  have  for  them  a  simple  recipe  for  faith. 
We  have  not  always  taken  our  own  pre- 
scription; alas,  that  we  must  confess  it! 
But  whenever  we  have  followed  the  advice, 
effect  has  always  followed  cause.  We  pass 
on  the  prescription  the  more  confidently, 
because  we  are  quite  sure  that  it  is  in  the 
line  of  a  good  man's  thinking.  He  wants 
to  live  true  to  truth.  Why  not  try  out  his 
faith,  with  the  definite  trust  that  here  is  the 
pathway  to  sure  belief?  We  see  through  a 
glass  darkly;  but  we  can  see  enough  to 
guide  us.  Why  wait  for  the  full  light  before 
taking  the  first  step?  Every  man  has  some 
light.     Why  not  follow  it  at  once? 

What,  then,  is  the  honest  doubter  doing 
with  his  half  creed?  Never  mind,  for  the 
time  being,  the  half  he  cannot  accept — what 
about  the  rest?     What  is  he  making  of  it? 


THE  ULTIMATE  TEST  29 

How  is  he  using  it?  The  ultimate  test  of 
religion  is  fidelity  to  known  facts,  obedience 
to  accepted  truth,  use  of  present  faith. 
Faith  as  a  theory,  however  correct,  is  of 
little  worth ;  faith  as  an  incentive  is  the  only 
faith  that  really  counts.  It  may  be  the 
simplest,  smallest  measure  of  faith;  but  if 
we  use  it,  it  starts  us  on  the  way;  it  begins 
for  us  the  divine  adventure ;  it  pushes  us  on 
towards  experiment,  and  experiment  is  the 
road  to  discovery. 

The  ultimate  test  of  religion  is  found  in 
the  question :  Are  you  living  true  to  all  the 
truth  you  already  know?  Are  you  acting 
it  out?  "He  that  willeth  to  do  His  will 
shall  know  of  the  teaching."  These  are  the 
words  of  Christ  and  they  are  His  definition 
of  religion's  vital  requirement. 


Ill 

THE  AVERAGE  MAN'S  RELIGION 

THESE  chapters  are  not  in  any  way- 
pretentious  of  purpose.  Because 
they  are  addressed  primarily  to 
thoughtful  men  who  are  unable  as  yet  to 
accept  whole-heartedly  the  simplest  state- 
ment of  the  formulated  faith  of  the  Church, 
they  are  not  written  for  mere  "  intel- 
lectuals." Not  half  the  honest  doubt  in  the 
world  is  the  result  of  intellectual  perplexity. 
Doubt  springs  rather  out  of  the  practical 
difficulties  of  plain  people  who  give  more  or 
less  thought  to  religious  questions,  at  least 
occasionally,  but  are  not  specially  skilled  in 
balancing  probabilities  and  making  fine  dis- 
tinctions. 

If  it  can  be  done  without  weakening  the 
general  argument — and  I  think  it  can — I 
should  like  to  make  this  an  essay  towards 
faith  that  will  appeal  particularly  to  the 
average  man — and  the  average  woman.  I 
think  I  understand  them  because  I  am 
just  an  average  man  myself.  It  is  time 
that  we  average  people  came  to  our  own; 
3° 


THEAVEKAGE  MAN'S  KELIGION    31 

time  we  had  religious  books  written  for  us, 
and  sermons  preached  for  us,  and  churches 
made  places  in  which  we  can  worship, 
where  everything  is  human  and  natural  and 
nothing  stilted  and  unreal. 

Most  books  of  religion  have  been  written 
for  intellectuals  who  are  sorely  troubled  by 
difficulties  of  faith  that  plain  common  sense 
brushes  aside  as  hardly  needing  explanation, 
or  for  trained  Christians  who  have  thought 
much  about  religious  problems  and  are 
deeply  interested  in  fine  theological  dis- 
tinctions. Most  churches  have  a  cultural 
worship  in  highly  developed  devotional 
form  and  robbed  of  reality  through  the  per- 
fection of  its  performance  by  trained  choirs, 
or  else  free  and  easy  evangelistic  services 
devoid  of  reverence  and  making  no  appeal 
to  the  deeper  instincts  of  hearts  hungry  for 
the  divine.  Most  sermons  are  either  con- 
ventionally pious  discourses  preached  for 
the  edification  of  practiced  saints  who  un- 
derstand and  love  the  vocabulary  of  homi- 
letics,  or  exhortations  to  confirmed  sin- 
ners— who  usually  are  not  there  to  hear 
the  appeal. 

The  average  man  seems  to  have  been  left 
out  of  reckoning.  He  is  not  a  hardened 
sinner.     Of  course  he  does  sin,  but  he  is 


32        THE  EXPEKIMENT  OF  FAITH 

sincerely  ashamed  of  his  shortcomings  and 
has  not  yet  learned  to  silence  his  conscience. 
He  certainly  wants  to  please  God,  even 
though  he  is  rather  uncertain  in  the  expres- 
sion of  his  desire.  Neither  is  he  very  re- 
ligious. Religious  people  seem  to  him 
solemn  and  serious  folk  who  lack  any  hu- 
mour or  light-heartedness  and  would  make 
this  a  very  sad  sort  of  a  world  if  they  suc- 
ceeded in  denaturing  the  rest  of  men  and 
settling  them  safely  and  sanely  on  their  own 
dull  level  of  respectability. 

The  average  man  has  very  simple  ideas 
of  religion.  To  him  it  means  unselfishness, 
generosity,  sincerity,  cleanliness  of  soul,  a 
genuineness  and  straightforward  honesty 
that  despises  cant  and  is  chary  of  anything 
in  the  way  of  religious  profession,  an  abid- 
ing faith  in  goodness  as  he  has  seen  it  in 
his  own  wife  or  mother,  a  very  real  humility 
because  of  his  own  defects — a  humility 
which  we  are  quite  justified  in  calling  peni- 
tence— and  a  readiness,  therefore,  to  forgive 
defects  (or,  as  we  should  say,  sins)  in 
others;  with  it  all,  a  general  consciousness 
of  God,  of  whom  he  is  rather  vaguely  aware 
and  about  whom  he  finds  it  almost  impossi- 
ble to  speak  easily  and  naturally.  Often 
the  average  man  seems  to  have  forgotten 


THE  AVEEAGE  MAN'S  EELIGION     33 

God — and  yet  somehow  we  understand  that 
he  really  is  conscious  of  Him,  as  the  child 
is  conscious  of  the  mother  in  another  part 
of  the  house  and  would  miss  her  if  he  knew 
she  had  gone  away. 

The  really  vital  books  of  the  war  are  the 
books  which  have  made  us  see  something  of 
the  average  man's  heart;  books  like  A 
Student  in  Arms  and  The  War  and  the  Soul, 
which  give  us  a  fresh  appreciation  of  the 
essential  goodness  of  common  men,  just  as 
what  we  have  seen  of  the  service  of  many 
strong  men  and  women  at  home  has  brought 
its  revelation  of  the  real  religion  of  such 
unattached  followers  of  Christ. 

The  one  passion  of  my  own  ministry  has 
been  to  try  to  interpret  the  average  man 
to  himself.  I  want  to  make  him  see  that  all 
the  ideals  of  goodness  which  he  ever  had  are 
to  be  found  in  Jesus  Christ.  I  want  to  have 
him  feel  that  Christ  is  not  the  kind  of  a 
person  the  painters  have  made  Him,  but  a 
likeable,  loveable,  strong,  manly  Friend  and 
Brother,  who  walked  the  path  of  human 
helpfulness  wherever  it  led,  who  came  to 
face  our  difficulties  with  our  strength,  who, 
never  compromised  and  never  slipped  back 
into  the  easy  path,  but  espoused  the  cause 
of  truth  against  every  error  and  took  the 


34        THE  EXPEEIMENT  OF  FAITH 

field  in  behalf  of  every  virtue  and  kept 
straight  on  and  never  faltered  and  never 
failed,  though  the  issue  of  courageous  adher- 
ence to  truth  and  right  was  Calvary  and  the 
cross. 

I  want  to  do  more  than  that — I  want  to 
make  men  see  that  everything  that  Jesus 
Christ  was  God  is,  and  I  want  them  to  un- 
derstand that  belief  in  the  divinity  of  Christ 
means  this.  I  want  them  to  know  that  if 
there  is  a  God  He  must  be  like  Christ  and  I 
want  them  to  believe  that  He  is  just  that 
sort  of  a  God,  in  spite  of  difficulties  and  in 
the  face  of  all  appearances  to  the  contrary. 
I  want  them,  when  life  is  hard,  to  know 
that  if  Christ  is  God  then  it  is  evident  that 
God  is  less  concerned  about  making  life 
easy  than  about  making  men  strong  and 
brave  and  great.  I  want  them  to  feel, 
whenever  the  world  looks  dark,  that  God  is 
behind  the  cloud,  even  if  we  cannot  under- 
stand why  He  does  not  reveal  Himself.  I 
want  them,  in  these  troubled  days,  to  know 
that  belief  in  Christ  means  the  certainty  that 
an  Easter  always  follows  a  Gethsemane  and 
Good  Friday.  I  want  them  through  Christ 
to  become  so  certain  of  God  that  they  will 
gladly  give  Him  the  undivided  allegiance  of 
their  lives. 


THE  AVERAGE  MAN'S  RELIGION    36 

After  all,  this  is  what  religion  is.  Some- 
how we  generally  confuse  it  with  knowledge 
about  God  and  His  world.  We  fancy  that 
it  means  knowing  what  God  is  and  having 
clear  and  definite  arguments  to  prove  His 
existence.  Somehow  we  usually  identify 
faith  with  complete  understanding  and  rea- 
soned belief. 

Is  it  not  true,  on  the  contrary,  that  those 
who  are  most  conscious  of  God  are  often 
least  able  to  tell  why  they  believe  in  Him? 
And  is  not  this  due  to  the  fact  that,  after  all, 
the  greatest  argument  for  God's  existence 
is  the  instinctive  belief  of  the  race  that  He 
does  exist?  Men  are  naturally  predisposed 
to  belief.  Instinctively  they  trust  con- 
science and  listen  to  the  voice  of  the  heart. 
Instinctively  they  put  God  and  immortality 
among  the  indisputable  facts  of  life.  To 
them  it  is  unthinkable  that  God  is  not  or 
that  this  life  ends  everything,  and  knowing 
that  the  mass  of  men  feel  just  as  they  do 
about  it,  they  need  no  further  arguments. 

What  they  do  need,  is  to  act  on  their 
belief.  That  is  the  only  way  in  which  the 
roots  of  faith  can  spring  up  and  bear  flowers 
and  fruit.  The  real  venture  of  faith  is  to 
understand  that  God,  if  there  is  a  God,  is 
the  one  thing  that  counts.     The  great  ad- 


36        THE  EXPEKIMEOT  OF  FAITH 

venture  is  to  let  the  soul  make  its  leap  to 
God.  Religion,  says  Donald  Hankey,  is 
just  "  betting  your  life  that  there  is  a  God  " : 
acting  on  the  probability,  staking  something 
on  the  truth  of  your  decision. 

We  need  knowledge,  of  course.  It  is 
good  for  us  to  reason  out  our  faith,  espe- 
cially if  we  have  any  desire  or  expectation 
of  passing  it  on  to  others.  We  need  to  have 
a  reason  for  the  hope  that  is  in  us.  But 
religion  is  not  knowledge;  it  is  friendship, 
relationship,  companionship  with  God. 

Well,  then,  if  we  believe  there  is  a  God, 
the  one  essential  thing  is  to  try  to  establish 
intercourse  with  Him.  That  is  really  what 
prayer  is,  as  we  shall  see  later  on.  We 
need  to  get  into  the  spirit  of  prayer  even 
though  we  do  not  pray  much  in  words — 
and  the  spirit  of  prayer  is  to  have  such  a 
conviction  of  God  and  His  righteousness 
that  we  find  our  real  peace  in  the  sure 
knowledge  that  we  are  following  His  will. 
That  is  the  reason  some  men  are  finding 
God  through  the  war.  "  Don't  think  for  a 
moment,"  says  one  of  the  English  chap- 
lains, "  that  the  Tommies  are  coming  out  of 
the  trenches  as  converts  by  the  thousands. 
They  are  not.  But  they  are  beginning  to 
think  of  things  seriously,  even  though  they 


THE  AVEEAGE  MAN'S  EELIGION    37 

will  not  talk  of  what  they  think,  and  they  are 
finding  the  peace  that  comes  from  the  con- 
sciousness that  they  are  fighting  on  God's 
side." 

Private  Peat  bears  similar  testimony. 
"  We  don't  pray  much  in  words/'  he  says, 
"  but  every  mother's  son  of  us  is  honestly 
at  peace  with  God  because  we  believe  that 
God  understands  and  it  makes  us  plain  com- 
fortable in  our  hearts.  I  have  been  two 
years  in  hell,"  he  continues,  "  and  have  come 
back  with  a  smile.  People  ask  me  how  it 
is  possible  to  come  back  smiling.  If  you 
had  taken  the  biggest  opportunity  life  ever 
held  out  to  a  man,  wouldn't  you  smile?  If 
you  had  gone  down  into  hell  for  the  sake  of 
the  people  who  were  there  already,  to  help 
them  out  if  you  could,  wouldn't  you  come 
back,  if  you  came  back  at  all,  smiling?  For 
us  the  issue  is  as  simple  as  black  and  white 
and  we  smile  because  we  know  we  are  doing 
what  God  wants  us  to  do." 

We  need  that  conviction  of  duty  faithfully 
done  in  all  of  life,  through  the  courage  of 
the  commonplace  as  well  as  in  the  courage 
of  the  crisis.  The  average  man  is  a  little 
afraid  of  getting  by  himself  and  quietly 
thinking  this  out;  but  when  he  forces  him- 
self to  do  it,  he  knows  by  his  sense  of  ease 


38        THE  EXPEEIMENT  OP  FAITH 

and  security,  when  he  is  really  striving  to  do 
Christ's  will,  that  he  is  on  the  right  road. 

The  first  step  towards  fixed  reality  in 
religion  is  to  try  to  say  all  this  to  God.  For 
that  reason  we  have  to  pray  in  words,  even 
though  we  find  it  a  hard  thing  to  do.  We 
are  helped  to  a  firm  faith  as  we  give  definite 
expression  to  our  faltering  faith.  It  makes 
our  own  convictions  more  certain.  And  it 
certainly  must  be  pleasing  to  God,  in  the 
same  way  that  it  warms  a  parent's  heart  to 
have  his  boy  tell  him  what  he  knows  al- 
ready that  the  boy  feels.  Hankey  has 
shown  us  something  of  the  religion  of  the 
inarticulate.  If  we  are  to  get  a  real  grip 
on  God  and  make  our  religion  more  vital, 
it  is  our  business  to  try  to  make  it  articulate, 
and  this  is  what  prayer  is. 

But  all  the  prayer  in  the  world  can  do  no 
good  save  as  it  is  the  honest  effort  in  this 
way  to  pledge  the  best  that  we  have  to  the 
best  that  we  know;  or  the  expression,  how- 
ever confused  and  awkward,  of  sincere  re- 
gret that  we  have  failed  in  moral  achieve- 
ment. 

What  the  average  man  needs  to  learn  is 
that  religion  grows  deeper  and  stronger  as 
he  tries  to  give  expression  to  his  thoughts 
about  God.     He  shrinks  from  this  expres- 


THE  AVERAGE  MAN'S  RELIGION     39 

sion  of  his  thoughts  even  to  himself;  or 
more  probably,  he  draws  back  and  refuses 
to  make  the  effort  to  express  them.  That 
is  just  where  he  fails  to  get  a  firm  hold  on 
faith.  If  there  is  a  God,  and  if  God  is  a 
Person,  the  essence  of  religion  is  to  estab- 
lish intercourse  with  Him.  Out  of  that 
comes  strength.  Through  that  we  become 
conscious  of  our  own  souls. 

Through  that  also  we  become  conscious 
of  sin.  The  tendency  has  been  to  ignore  it. 
Practically,  the  average  man's  philosophy 
has  been  that  of  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  who  tells 
us  that  the  best  men  are  not  worrying  about 
their  sins;  they  have  let  the  dead  bury  their 
dead;  what  is  past  and  gone  had  best  be 
forgotten,  they  say,  and  real  religion  de- 
mands that  we  be  up  and  doing;  action,  not 
introspection,  must  mark  our  path  to  God. 

In  a  way  they  are  right.  The  best  method 
of  getting  rid  of  sin  is  to  put  something  in 
its  place.  We  cannot  pull  sins  out  of  the 
heart,  we  must  push  them  out  by  putting 
something  else  in.  The  best  thing  to  do 
with  an  evil  past  is  to  make  a  fresh  start  and 
try  to  fashion  out  of  it  a  splendid  future. 
Yet,  as  Canon  McComb  points  out,  "we 
cannot  drift  into  goodness  without  thought 
or  effort ";  we  must  learn  the  cause  of  past 


40        THE  EXPEKIMENT  OF  FAITH 

blunders  and  discover  the  best  means  of 
destroying  bad  habits.  Growth  comes  by 
moral  decisions  and  decisions  of  the  will 
presuppose  serious  reflection.  "  Sin  is  not 
an  accidental  scar,  a  wart  or  wen,  but  a  deep- 
seated  moral  disorder."  If  we  are  to  get 
rid  of  it,  therefore,  we  must  get  back  to  the 
very  heart  of  things;  we  must,  in  the  very 
center  of  our  being,  keep  a  place  sacred  to 
God.  "There  is  nothing  absolutely  good 
except  a  good  will,"  and  to  make  the  will 
right  we  must  get  alone  with  God  and  in 
passive  receptivity  permit  Him  to  show  us 
what  we  ought  to  be  and  how  He  wants  to 
use  us. 

This,  surely,  is  where  the  average  man 
fails  and  his  failure  arises  out  of  the  neglect 
to  live  true  to  his  belief  that  there  is  a  God. 
He  does  believe  in  God,  and  his  common 
sense  teaches  him  that  God  is  a  Person;  but 
he  does  not  follow  out  his  belief  by  taking 
time  to  cultivate  friendship  with  this  divine 
Person.  He  forgets  that  we  do  not  find  the 
deep  things  of  life;  they  find  us.  Our  part 
is  to  incline  the  ear  and  open  the  heart.  If 
we  permit  ourselves  to  live  through  this 
mysterious  life  on  this  mysterious  earth 
with  no  outlook  on  the  unseen  and  the 
eternal,   God  must  withhold   from  us   His 


THE  AVEBAGE  MAN'S  RELIGION     41 

secrets.  This  is  the  simple  thought  that  I 
am  trying  to  drive  home.  A  Christian  is  not 
a  man  who  declares  his  belief  in  God  and  has 
accepted  the  facts  of  Christ's  life,  but  a  man 
who  is  striving  with  all  his  heart  to  get  to 
know  God  and  to  establish  friendship  with 
Him  through  Christ. 

Speak  to  Him,  thou,  for  He  hears ;  and 

spirit  with  spirit  can  meet. 
Closer  is  He  than  breathing  and  nearer 

than  hands  and  feet. 


IV 
THE  OTHER  HALF 

IN    summoning    others    to    make    the 
venture  of  faith,  we  start,  as  we  have 
already  acknowledged,  with  a  confes- 
sion and  self-accusation. 

It  is  said  of  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  that  when 
Dr.  Gore  was  Bishop  of  Birmingham  the 
great  scientist  rarely  failed  to  attend  serv- 
ices or  meetings  at  which  the  Bishop 
preached.  Once  he  was  asked  for  an  ex- 
planation. "  Why  do  you  always  go  to  hear 
Bishop  Gore,"  said  the  questioner;  "surely 
you  do  not  believe  what  he  preaches?" 
"  No,"  was  the  reply ;  "  I  don't ;  but  he  does." 
It  was  an  inspiration  to  listen  to  a  man  who 
was  all  on  fire  with  faith.  Honest  conviction 
is  always  respected.  Evident  sincerity  has 
tremendous  drawing  power. 

Most  of  us  must  confess  that  our  own 
lives  have  too  often  belied  our  creed.  In- 
tellectually we  take  ourselves  to  be  con- 
vinced Christians;  but  the  world  would 
never  guess  it.  There  is  no  sharp  line  of 
cleavage  between  our  lives  and  the  lives  of 
4* 


THE  OTHER  HALF  43 

others  who  deny  what  we  believe.  We 
declare  the  Christian  faith  to  be  the  spring 
and  fountain  source  of  Christian  living;  but 
we  fail  to  show  that  our  statement  is  more 
than  a  fine-spun  theory. 

So  we  must  start  on  faith's  experiment 
ourselves.  For  ourselves  and  for  others, 
we  must  press  our  Lord's  injunction:  He 
that  doeth  the  will  shall  know.  That  is  the 
point.  Not  how  much  faith,  but  how  in- 
tensive a  faith;  how  deep,  how  active? 
Faith  as  a  grain  of  mustard  seed  can  do 
great  things,  if  it  only  be  given  the  chance  to 
germinate.  St.  Paul  had  the  heavenly 
vision :  the  great  fact  of  his  subsequent  life 
was  that  he  was  obedient  to  the  vision. 

The  ultimate  measure  of  faith  is  obedi- 
ence :  we  must  live  true  to  the  truth.  Who- 
ever is  convinced  of  a  truth,  whoever  ac- 
cepts any  set  of  views  or  statement  of  facts, 
whoever  approves  any  particular  course  of 
action,  must  live  in  obedience  to  it.  Whether 
we  have  much  light  or  little,  we  must  walk 
in  the  light.  Some  have  an  abundance  of 
faith,  others  very  little,  just  faint  glimmer- 
ings of  light  as  to  some  things  and  hardly 
any  light  as  to  many  things.  But  whether 
we  have  much  light  or  little,  the  supreme 
question  is  always  this :  What  are  you  doing 


44        THE  EXPEEIMENT  OF  FAITH 

with  the  faith  you  have?  How  are  you  fol- 
lowing the  light  already  received?  Are  you 
living  true  to  the  truth?  Or  is  that  truth 
just  a  theory  that  you  have  never  really  put 
to  the  test?  Never  mind  the  half  that  you 
cannot  understand ;  what  are  you  doing  with 
the  other  half  that  you  do  understand? 

A  group  of  earnest  men  were  pouring  out 
of  a  convention  hall  where  representatives 
of  a  national  church  had  been  deliberating 
on  present  tasks  and  opportunities,  when 
one  of  them  turned  to  a  great  leader,  a 
whole-hearted,  devoted  bishop,  and  asked 
him  what  he  felt  was  the  real  note  of  the 
gathering.  Was  it  to  be  found  in  the  in- 
spiring conferences,  in  the  quickened  mis- 
sionary spirit,  in  the  splendid  leadership 
manifested  in  some  of  the  debates,  in  the 
harmony  of  spirit  that  appeared  where  sharp 
differences  of  opinion  had  been  expected  to 
result  in  serious  clashes  among  men  of  dif- 
ferent schools  of  thought?  All  these  were 
enough,  apparently,  to  call  forth  enthusiasm. 
But,  with  an  expression  so  serious  as  to 
seem  a  little  akin  to  dread,  the  bishop  asked : 
"  Were  you  not  a  little  afraid  of  our  drifting 
into  corporate  insincerity?  This  has  been 
called  a  revolutionary  convention;  I  wonder 
if  it  has  not  really  been  resolutionary?" 


THE  OTHEE  HALF  45 

Vital  subjects  of  present  day  moment  had 
been  considered;  crying  needs  had  sounded 
their  claims;  social  questions  had  been  given 
a  hearing;  industrial  problems  had  been 
pressed  for  solution.  In  every  case  report 
and  discussion  had  ended  in  counsels  of 
safety  and  sanity.  Admirable  resolutions 
had  been  passed.  The  danger  was  that  it 
would  all  end  there.  Having  passed  pre- 
ambles and  resolutions,  would  we  forget 
them?  Would  we  fail  to  see  that  resolu- 
tions are  embodied  truth  packed  into  con- 
venient form  for  subsequent  action?  When 
the  time  for  the  next  convention  came, 
would  it  be  discovered  that  in  the  mean- 
while all  had  been  relegated  to  the  minute 
book,  beautifully  engrossed  and  then 
neglected? 

Is  it  not  our  personal  peril?  We  recog- 
nize the  truth  and  accept  it;  but  we  do  not 
try  hard  enough  to  live  it.  In  religion  we 
are  more  apt  to  argue  about  what  we  believe 
or  disbelieve  than  to  set  to  work  seriously 
to  embody  belief  in  action. 

Because  we  so  frankly  admit  the  incon- 
sistency in  ourselves,  we  may  be  forgiven  if 
we  point  out  to  others  the  value  of  the  lesson 
our  own  experience  has  taught.  The  first 
step  towards  faith  is  very  simple.     It  means 


46        THE  EXPEKIMEOT  OF  FAITH 

a  readiness  for  the  moment  to  let  go  all  dis- 
cussion of  our  beliefs  and  unbeliefs  and  to 
try  to  put  aside  for  the  time  the  things  we 
cannot  accept,  that  we  may  concentrate  on 
the  things  we  do  accept.  There  is  no  one 
who  does  not  know  that  with  all  his  doubts 
there  are  for  him  certain  well-established 
verities.  At  least  he  has  a  half  creed. 
There  are  some  things  which  for  him  are 
true.  What  is  he  doing  with  them?  To 
start  with  the  half  creed  and  try  to  live  it 
will  be  to  make  a  beginning  towards  a  fuller 
creed  and  a  richer  life.  To  obey,  says 
Lacordaire,  is  like  opening  the  eyes  to  the 
light.  tWe  see  only  as  we  look  carefully; 
we  believe  only  as  we  live  prayerfully.  De- 
sire faith  and  it  will  come.  Act  out  your 
creed  and  you  will  have  a  larger  creed. 

It  is  worth  while  to  notice  that  those  who 
first  received  the  Christian  revelation  were 
the  men  and  women  who  were  faithful  to 
the  light  they  had ;  those  who  had  long  been 
in  the  habit  of  obeying  the  call  of  conscience 
carefully  and  so  were  ready  for  the  fuller 
revelation.  Think  over  the  list:  Zacharias 
and  Elizabeth,  both  "  righteous  before  God, 
walking  in  all  the  commandments  and  or- 
dinances of  the  law  blameless  ";  Joseph,  a 
"just  man";  Simeon,  "just  and  devout,  wait- 


THE  OTHEE  HALF  47 

ing  for  the  consolation  of  Israel  ";  Joseph  of 
Arimathea,  "a  good  man  and  just"; 
Nathanael,  "  an  Israelite  indeed,  in  whom 
was  no  guile  " ;  the  company  of  the  apos- 
tles— they  were  penitents  called  from  among 
the  crowds  gathered  by  the  Baptist's  preach- 
ing on  the  banks  of  the  Jordan.  When, 
afterwards,  these  apostles  went  out  to 
preach  Christ,  the  chief  conversions  were 
of  those  who  were  living  true  to  the  truth 
they  had.  Cornelius,  the  first  Gentile  con- 
vert, was  "  a  devout  man  who  feared  God, 
and  gave  much  alms  to  the  people,  and 
prayed  to  God  always."  At  Perga  Paul 
addressed  "  the  devout  Jews  and  those  who 
feared  God."  At  Thessalonica  "a  multi- 
tude of  the  religious  Greeks  "  believed.  At 
Athens  and  elsewhere  those  who  were  en- 
deavouring, however  imperfectly,  to  live  up 
to  the  light  they  had  were  the  ones  who 
saw  the  truth  of  the  new  message,  not  the 
mere  thoughtless  heathen.  The  first  Chris- 
tian disciples  were  a  picked  company  of 
conscientious,  right-minded,  God-fearing 
folk  who  were  already  in  the  pathway  of 
faith;  had  started,  long  before,  on  the  divine 
quest. 

It  has  always  been  true;  it  always  will  be 
true.     Here,  indeed,  is  one   exhibition,  at 


48        THE  EXPEEIMENT  OF  FAITH 

any  rate,  of  the  truth  of  the  Master's  saying, 
"  To  him  that  hath  shall  be  given."  The 
one  vital  requirement  of  religion  (I  am 
using  another's  words)  is  fidelity  to  known 
truth.  Knowing  the  truth;  admiring  the 
truth ;  sighing  after  the  truth ;  even  making 
dashes  towards  the  truth — this  is  not 
enough.     We  must  live  true  to  the  truth. 

What  is  the  trouble  with  most  men?  Is 
it  that  they  do  not  know  enough  about  God 
and  themselves;  or  is  it  that,  in  spite  of 
knowledge  and  in  the  very  face  of  facts,  they 
are  content  to  drift  along  as  they  are? 
What  good  would  new  truth  do  us,  if  we 
have  made  nothing  of  the  old  truth?  Be- 
lief is  not  a  matter  of  interesting  dialectics; 
it  is  a  gift  for  life.  Live  true  to  the  faith 
you  have,  and  it  will  grow;  hold  it  in  disuse 
and  it  will  go. 

For  faith  can  survive  anything  except 
neglect.  It  will  live  through  many  trials; 
it  will  hold  firm  through  many  disappoint- 
ments; it  will  withstand  many  shocks.  The 
one  thing  it  cannot  survive  is  being  ignored. 
It  is  given  us  as  a  rule  to  live  by.  If  we 
try  to  hold  it  simply  as  an  intellectual  sys- 
tem, it  will  bring  about  a  complete  moral 
paralysis.  If  translated  into  action,  it  is  in- 
exhaustible power. 


V 

LETTING  ONESELF  GO 

THE  trouble  with  most  of  us  is  that 
we  will  not  let  ourselves  go  in 
religion.  We  make  our  belief  in 
God  a  cautious  consent  to  a  logical  proposi- 
tion. 

For  of  course  most  men  believe  in  God; 
that  is,  they  believe  in  His  existence.  The 
real  difficulty  is,  that  they  assent  to  the 
statement  of  belief  and  then  think  no  more 
about  it.  This  simply  means  that  God  does 
not  by  any  possibility  count  in  their  lives. 

There  are  two  things  necessary  to  make 
our  belief  in  God  an  energetic  faith.  The 
first  is,  to  make  the  faith  an  affair  of  the 
heart  and  not  simply  of  the  head.  The  sec- 
ond is  to  understand  that  here,  as  in  other 
matters,  we  are  not  to  demand  absolute 
certitude  before  we  shall  be  willing  to  take 
the  first  step.  There  is  such  a  thing  as 
missing  the  romance  of  religion  because  we 
will  not  make  ventures.  Nothing  venture, 
nothing  have. 

49 


50        THE  EXPERIMENT  OF  FAITH 

To  begin  with  the  first:  Let  us  give  the 
heart  its  due.  Indeed,  even  intellectual 
consent  to  the  first  article  of  belief  requires 
that.  Faith  cannot  rest  upon  logical 
processes.  The  failure  to  take  account  of 
this  is  the  first  cause  of  unbelief.  There  is 
no  clear,  clean-cut  proof  of  the  existence  of 
God.  There  is,  of  course,  probable  proof, 
moral  certainty;  but  there  is  no  demon- 
strative proof.  That,  however,  need  not 
trouble  us. 

The  night  has  a  thousand  eyes, 

And  the  day  but  one ; 
Yet  the  light  of  the  bright  world  dies 

With  the  dying  sun. 

The  mind  has  a  thousand  eyes, 

And  the  heart  but  one ; 
Yet  the  light  of  the  whole  life  dies 

When  love  is  done. 

The  heart,  therefore,  has  something  to 
say  as  to  God's  existence.  We  cannot  arrive 
at  a  knowledge  of  Him  by  purely  logical 
deductions.  We  must  trust  the  instincts 
and  affections.  And  we  must  accept  their 
report  as  being  just  as  worthy  of  credence 
as  any  mathematical  formula.  Some  men 
have  lost  their  faith  in  God  because  they 
have  tried  to  buttress  belief  after  the  same 
fashion  that  they  would  draw  up  a  legal  con- 


LETTING  ONESELF  GO  51 

tract  God  is  not  found  that  way.  He  is 
more  than  the  end  of  a  syllogism. 

On  the  whole,  most  of  us  are  certain  that 
God  is;  though  when  we  come  to  balance 
the  arguments,  there  is  something  to  be 
said  on  the  other  side.  For  myself,  I  should 
say  that  the  biggest  argument  against  God 
is  the  presence  of  evil  in  the  world.  I  can- 
not understand  why  God  did  not  make  men 
good  and  keep  them  good.  Or,  if  that  would 
mean  not  moral  goodness,  but  mere  mechan- 
ical perfection,  I  cannot  understand  why,  if 
there  is  a  God,  He  permits  evil  to  go  so 
long  unpunished. 

It  would  seem  that  my  difficulty  is  the 
difficulty  of  most  men.  How  many  times, 
since  the  great  war  began,  have  we  asked 
where  God  was  when  the  Huns  swept  over 
Belgium ?  Where  was  God,  when  the  Lusi- 
tania  sank  with  the  women  and  children? 
Where  was  God,  when  the  Turks  swept  over 
Armenia  and  left  it  an  abomination  of  deso- 
lation? Did  He  not  care?  Did  He  look  on 
unconcerned  when  Edith  Cavell  was  mur- 
dered, when  Germans  were  cutting  out  the 
breasts  of  women  and  chopping  off  the 
hands  of  little  children,  when  sanctuaries 
were  defiled  and  dead  cats  nailed  upon  altar 
crosses?     The    literature    of   the   war   has 


62        THE  EXPERIMENT  OP  FAITH 

been  full  of  this  passionate  protest  against 
the  presence  of  evil  in  the  world.  From 
Mr,  Britling's  confused  and  tortured  wres- 
tling with  the  problem, on  to  the  latest  novel 
of  Mrs.  Humphrey  Ward,  we  have  thrust 
upon  us  the  same  question  of  faith.  In 
Missing  the  young  lieutenant,  just  married 
and  leaving  to-morrow  for  the  front,  tries  to 
think  it  out.  He  was  one  of  my  "  average  " 
men,  yet  he  had  his  troubled  perplexities 
over  the  general  scheme  of  things  in  this 
strange  universe  that  we  must  believe  came 
from  God.  "  He  thought  of  all  those 
mangled  men — out  there — in  France.  Who 
is  responsible — God  or  man?  Man,  of 
course.  But  man's  will  is — must  be — some- 
thing included  in  God's  will.  So  his  young- 
mind  raced  through  the  old  puzzles  in  the 
old  way." 

His  difficulty  is  mine — yours.  I  know  that 
I  am  not  alone  in  crying  out  in  these  days  for 
God  to  show  His  hand  and  stretch  forth  His 
mighty  arm.  I  do  not  see  how  His  good- 
ness can  be  reconciled  with  suffering  and 
sorrow  and  sin  and  pain.  My  difficulty  is 
not  a  new  one.  I  have  never  understood 
why  the  wicked  should  prosper;  the  ungodly 
flourish  like  a  green  bay  tree.  I  go  by,  and 
lo,  in  contradiction  to  the  psalmist,  he  is 


LETTING  ONESELF  GO  53 

not  gone;  he  is  very  much  in  evidence. 
Things  continue  to  go  well  with  him.  The 
righteous,  meanwhile,  have  a  hard  time  of 
it,  only  too  often.  The  very  best  of  men 
come  to  the  saddest  times,  and  God  seems 
indifferent. 

All  this  would  make  me  lose  my  faith  in 
God  completely  if  I  did  not  wait  for  the 
heart  to  speak.  That  tells  me  that  I  need 
God,  and  that  He  must  exist  to  satisfy  my 
hunger.  It  reminds  me  of  the  mysterious 
voice  of  conscience,  the  thing  within  me  that 
sets  up  the  standard  of  right  and  wrong — 
that  very  standard  by  which  I  have  de- 
manded divine  intervention — and  I  feel  that 
the  moral  law  of  necessity  presupposes  a 
Lawgiver.  When  I  listen  to  the  heart 
speak,  I  remember  the  unchangeable  rule  of 
happiness:  I  know  that  there  is  some  real 
connection  between  joy  and  goodness,  some 
real  connection  between  sin  and  unhappi- 
ness.  The  moment  I  stop  and  let  that  sink 
in,  the  law  begins  to  work.  I  cannot  be 
happy  and  contented  apart  from  obedience 
to  what  I  call  the  good  and  right. 

Above  all,  I  remember  many  experiences 
since  I  came  to  believe  in  God  through 
Christ  which  deepen  my  faith.  Through 
Jesus  I  learn  of  a  God  who  once  entered  into 


54        THE  EXPERIMENT  OF  FAITH 

the  tragedy  of  human  life  to  show  that  He 
understands  and  sympathizes.  In  the  study 
of  His  life  I  find  my  ideas  of  God  and  good- 
ness wonderfully  enlarged.  In  the  story  of 
His  death  I  gain  "  a  perennial  experience  of 
renewal  and  renovation.',  All  these  things 
make  me  believe  in  God  far  more  truly  than 
cosmological  or  teleological  or  any  other 
logical  argument.  After  all,  they  tell  me 
what  I  want  to  know  about  God.  It  does 
not  much  matter  to  me  that  God  is  omnis- 
cient or  omnipotent  or  omnipresent;  what 
I  want  to  know  is  whether  He  cares  for  me 
and  cares  that  I  care  for  Him.  And,  when 
I  listen  to  the  voice  of  the  heart,  I  am  as 
sure  of  that  as  I  can  possibly  be  of  anything 
in  the  world — I  am  more  sure  of  it  than  I 
am  of  anything  but  my  own  existence. 

Well,  now,  what  am  I  going  to  do  about 
it,  once  I  am  sure?  Just  stop,  content  that 
a  difficult  question  has  been  settled  and  that 
I  have  answered  it  correctly?  Just  declare 
that  God  is  and  let  it  rest  at  that?  It  does 
seem  sometimes  as  if  this  were  what  most 
people  do,  and  because  this  is  what  they  do 
their  faith  in  God  is  never  firm  and  unfalter- 
ing. Faith  was  not  given  us,  to  be  labelled 
and  laid  aside  among  an  assortment  of 
mental  concepts.     It  was  given  us  to  use.    • 


LETTING  ONESELF  GO  55 

So,  once  I  have  come  to  believe  that  there 
is  a  God,  it  is  my  business  to  try  to  know 
Him.  I  take  it  that  is  what  prayer  is.  We 
start  out  with  the  assumption  that  there  is 
a  personal  God  who  knows  us  and  cares  for 
us,  and  so  we  go  to  Him  and  speak  to  Him 
just  as  we  would  to  an  earthly  father. 
Prayer  does  not  mean  that  we  shall  be  con- 
stantly asking  God  to  do  something  for  us, 
always  begging  Him  for  some  favour;  it 
means  that  because  we  believe  that  God  is, 
we  are  going  to  try  to  establish  a  warm, 
living  relationship  with  Him. 

For  that  matter,  we  do  not  even  need  to 
be  certain  that  God  is,  before  we  make  this 
venture  of  faith.  Bishop  Butler  was  wise 
in  his  generation  and  we  have  not  yet  out- 
grown his  wisdom.  He  taught  us  that 
probability  is  the  very  guide  of  life;  and  we 
know  that  it  is  so,  in  business,  in  govern- 
ment, in  moral  conduct  with  its  numerous 
choices  of  conflicting  duties,  in  the  sanctities 
of  human  life,  even  in  exact  mathematics. 
Why  not  let  it  be  our  guide  in  religion  ?  On 
the  whole  there  are  reasons  enough  for  be- 
lieving that  there  is  a  God.  Why  not  take 
a  chance  at  it  and  try  to  establish  relations 
with  Him?  Unless  we  do  chance  it,  the 
fact  of  His  existence  or  non-existence  is  a 


56        THE  EXPEKIMENT  OF  FAITH 

thing  of  utter  indifference.  What  does  it 
matter  to  us  whether  He  is  or  is  not,  if  we 
are  not  trying  to  know  Him? 

Now  the  actual  fact  in  the  case  of  many 
men  is,  that  they  will  not  take  this  step  into 
the  region  of  probability.  They  accept  God, 
but  they  stop  there.  They  make  no  effort 
to  know  Him.  tThey  spend  no  time  in 
thinking  about  Him.  They  let  Him 
severely  alone.  iThen,  by  and  by,  they 
marvel  that  their  faith  fails.  Or  they  argue 
with  some  one  else  whose  faith  is  gone  and 
wonder  that  the  unbeliever  is  not  convinced. 
"  Prayer,"  says  Carey,  "  transmutes  an  in- 
tellectual conviction  or  probability  into 
something  personal  and  passionate  by  lead- 
ing the  soul  into  the  presence  of  God  and 
leaving  God  and  the  soul  together.  Yet 
there  are  people  who  have  the  face  to  argue 
and  dispute  about  religion  from  a  religious 
standpoint,  when  they  themselves  do  not 
pray."  Why,  the  most  they  could  gain  by 
further  proof  would  be  some  increase  or 
decrease  of  intellectual  probability;  and 
what  good  would  that  do  them?  The  very 
purpose  for  which  their  faith  was  given 
them  was  that  they  might  put  it  to  work; 
and  they  have  kept  it  laid  up  in  a  napkin. 
The  value  of  belief,  however  imperfect,  is 


LETTING  ONESELF  GO  57 

that  it  shall  be  the  incentive  to  sonship. 
Men  must  know  God  as  a  Father  if  they  are 
to  keep  on  believing  in  Him  at  all.  And 
they  cannot  realize  their  sonship  if  they  hold 
no  relations  with  Him. 

We  often  fancy  that  belief  comes  some- 
how out  of  hard  thought,  that  it  is  the  re- 
sult of  logical  processes,  the  outcome  of 
philosophical  enquiry.  Not  at  all.  What 
really  happens,  in  most  cases,  is  that  the 
practical  attempt  to  live  as  if  there  were  a 
Divine  Father  turns  out  to  be  the  way  in 
which  we  come  to  know  Him.  Faith  is  the 
corollary  of  conduct.  In  practical  ways  we 
try  out  a  theory  and  then  we  come  to  know 
it  as  fact.  We  act  on  the  germ  of  faith, 
and  it  grows  and  expands.  The  seed  be- 
comes a  tree.  The  truth  we  have  acted  on 
becomes  a  larger  truth.  We  walk  in  the 
light  while  it  is  yet  dim,  and  lo!  it  begins 
to  shine  to  the  perfect  day. 

The  ventures  of  faith!  And  the  first 
venture  is  to  learn  to  let  oneself  go!  All 
this,  and  this,  and  this,  I  believe  to  be  true, 
it  sounds  very  probable;  but  its  truth  or 
falsity  is  going  to  be  a  matter  of  no  moment 
whatever  unless  I  try  it  out.  I  must  make 
the  experiment,  and  act  on  the  chance,  if  I 
am  to  find  God. 


VI 

THE  FORGOTTEN  GOD 

LET  us  start  with  a  man  who  has  the 
dimmest  possible  faith  in  God.  We 
pin  him  down  to  his  actual  belief, 
and  he  confesses  that  its  content  hardly  goes 
beyond  the  fact  of  God's  being.  He  cannot, 
on  the  whole,  say  more  than  that  he  believes 
there  is  a  God.  He  does  not  know  anything 
about  God:  he  merely  acknowledges  His 
probable  existence.  What  can  be  said  to 
such  a  man?  Has  he  enough  faith  to  make 
a  start  on? 

Of  course.  Indeed,  it  is  a  good  start  that 
he  is  honest  enough  to  state  his  creed  in  the 
smallest  and  most  restricted  form.  It  in- 
dicates that  he  has  really  tried  to  think 
things  out.  The  one  thing  of  which  he 
needs  to  make  certain  is  this :  for  what  pur- 
pose has  he  done  his  thinking?  Why  does 
he  want  to  know  whether  there  is  a  God  or 
not?  What  change  will  it  make  in  his  life 
if  his  certainty  deepens?  Does  he  expect 
to  put  his  knowledge  to  the  practical  test? 
58 


THE  FOKGOTTEN  GOD  59 

In  other  words,  if  we  believe  in  God  at 
all,  we  must  begin  to  live  as  if  we  believed  in 
Him.  Most  of  us,  let  me  repeat,  do  not. 
Practically  speaking,  we  banish  Him  as  soon 
as  we  have  a  hint  that  it  is  possible  to  make 
His  fuller  acquaintance.  Whereas,  if  there 
really  is  a  God,  we  should  above  all  things 
desire  to  be  in  conscious,  felt,  sustained 
relationship  with  Him. 

One  of  England's  great  preachers,  in  an 
address  on  the  search  for  God,  pictures  a 
group  of  young  men  standing  together  in 
the  smoking  room  of  their  club  discussing 
religion.  They  are  tossing  about,  pell-mell, 
all  the  difficulties  about  God  and  the  Bible : 
the  creation  stories  of  Genesis,  the  mistakes 
of  Scriptures,  the  miracles,  the  doctrinal 
definitions  of  the  creeds,  the  divisions  in  the 
Church,  the  failure  of  Christians,  the  variety 
of  religions,  unanswered  prayer,  eternal 
punishment,  and  a  score  of  other  objections. 
Suddenly  some  one  interrupts  with  a  ques- 
tion: "Yes,  gentlemen,  and  yet  you  want 
God,  do  you  not?"  As  the  question  is 
asked,  there  is  supposed  to  appear  in  the 
room  a  face  and  figure,  a  vision  of  Jesus 
Christ. 

Had  such  a  figure  really  appeared  before 
such  a  group,  we  know  what  would  happen. 


60        THE  EXPEEIMENT  OF  FAITH 

In  a  moment  every  chair  in  the  smoking 
room  would  be  vacant,  cigarettes  and  cigars 
would  be  thrown  away  and  every  man  would 
spring  to  his  feet  and  then  fall  to  his  knees, 
white,  tense,  breathless.  When  the  vision 
departed,  his  one  desire  would  be  to  get 
away  from  the  crowd,  to  be  by  himself  and 
think.  Something  corresponding  to  that 
ought  to  happen  to  every  man  who  has  be- 
come convinced  of  God,  however  slight  his 
faith.  Only  as  something  like  that  does 
happen,  will  his  faith  grow.  If  God  does 
exist,  surely  the  first  thing  to  do  is  to  put 
oneself  in  His  presence  and  bend  before 
Him  in  reverence. 

That  can  be  done  best  alone.  We  must 
go  apart  and  force  ourselves  to  think  and 
think  hard.  In  the  old  days  men  wrestled 
with  God.  Through  agonizing  struggle 
they  made  their  way  to  Him.  Nor  were 
they  satisfied  until  they  had  done  something 
corresponding  to  the  action  of  kneeling  in 
the  smoking  room  before  that  crowd,  with 
all  the  others  looking  on  or  kneeling  them- 
selves. Men  made  their  way  to  the 
mourners'  bench  or  the  confessional.  In 
some  way  they  openly  confessed  God. 
Whether  we  press  this  upon  a  man  at  once 
or  not,  at  least  we  can  say  this,  that  he  must 


THE  FOKGOTTEN  GOD  61 

begin  to  take  his  small  belief  seriously,  he 
must  do  something  to  toughen  his  faith  and 
tighten  his  will. 

The  man  who  believes  there  is  a  God,  but 
knows  nothing  more,  will  find  usually  that 
his  failure  runs  back  into  this,  that  he  has 
never  started  on  the  divine  quest.  If  it 
were  a  matter  of  business  he  had  to  thrash 
out,  or  a  legal  tangle  he  had  to  straighten, 
or  an  engineering  problem  he  had  to  solve, 
he  would  tackle  the  matter  in  the  only 
sensible  way;  go  off  and  shut  himself  in  his 
room ;  pull  himself  together  into  an  attitude 
of  sharp  attention,  and  concentrate  his 
whole  mind  upon  the  thing  till  he  had 
thought  it  out.  Why  will  not  the  same  man 
go  aside  and  spend  some  time  in  trying  to 
put  himself  into  vital  union  with  God — al- 
ways assuming  that  he  has  accepted  the 
probability  of  God's  existence? 

A  mystic  once  wrote  on  practicing  the 
presence  of  God,  and  wrote  about  it  as 
sensibly  and  practically  as  if  he  were  a 
modern  business  man.  Only  he  did  not 
have  half  the  intellect  or  half  the  practical 
ability  of  the  modern  business  man,  and  he 
had  to  practice  God's  presence  among  the 
pots  and  pans  of  the  monastery  scullery  in- 
stead of  doing  it  in  the  comparative  quiet  of 


62        THE  EXPEBIMENT  OF  FAITH 

the  limousine  on  his  way  to  the  office.  At 
any  rate,  wherever  and  however  we  do  it, 
we  must  stop  once  in  a  while  to  remember 
that  God  is  near — around  and  about  us. 

It  will  be  a  matter  of  surprise  how  the 
sense  of  God's  presence,  thus  occasionally 
recalled,  will  grow  into  a  continued  habit  of 
mind.  The  involuntary  consciousness  of 
the  divine  comes  as  the  result  of  occasional 
voluntary  recollection.  I  would  not  dare 
write  this,  if  I  did  not  know  it  not  simply 
out  of  my  own  experience  but  on  the 
authority  of  far  better  men  than  myself. 
Nor  would  I  write  it  if  I  did  not  have  it  on 
the  authority  of  men  who  are  not  merely 
religious,  but  are  sane,  sensible,  practical, 
level-headed  men,  of  every-day  common 
sense.  They  will  tell  you — ask  one  of  them, 
if  you  will — how,  in  the  morning,  before 
they  go  out  to  work,  they  kneel  and  con- 
sider quietly  that  God  goes  with  them. 
They  could  tell  you — but  they  will  not,  for 
they  have  a  modest  reticence — how  they 
rise  from  such  prayer  with  the  sunshine  in 
their  souls.  In  every  case,  if  you  can  get 
them  to  talk  of  it,  they  will  tell  you  that  the 
consciousness  of  the  divine  did  not  come  to 
them  all  at  once.  It  grew  with  practice. 
They  made  up  their  minds  not  to  forget 


THE  FOKGOTTEN  GOD  63 

God,  and  they  found  that  God  did  not  for- 
get them. 

Actually,  have  not  most  of  us  forgotten 
God  most  of  the  time?  That  seems  to  be 
the  fact  that  has  pressed  itself  home  to  the 
finest  minds  in  this  time  of  war;  indeed,  has 
pressed  itself  home  upon  every  type  of  mind 
in  the  nations  who  are  feeling  most  keenly 
the  agony  of  the  struggle.  It  has  suddenly 
dawned  on  men  that  while  they  declared 
their  belief  in  God  they  had  practically  left 
Him  wholly  out  of  consideration  in  the  rush 
of  life.  "  Neither  was  God  in  all  their 
thoughts."  Face  to  face  now  with  the  great 
realities,  they  are  finding  God  again  where 
normally  they  might  least  expect  Him — in 
the  pain  and  horror  of  trench  and  battle- 
field and  hospital. 

We  had  forgotten  You,  or  very  nearly — 
You  did  not  seem  to  touch  us  very  nearly — 
Of  course  we  thought  about  You  now  and  then ; 
Especially  in  any  time  of  trouble — 
We  knew  that  You  were  good  in  time  of 

trouble — 
But  we  are  very  ordinary  men. 

And  there  were  always  other  things  to  think 

of— 
There's  lots  of  things  a  man  has  got  to  think 

of— 
His  work,  his  home,  his  pleasure,  and  his  wife; 


64        THE  EXPERIMENT  OF  FAITH 

And  so  we  only  thought  of  You  on  Sunday — 
Sometimes,  perhaps,  not  even  on  a  Sunday — 
Because  there's  always  lots  to  fill  one's  life. 

Now  we  remember ;  over  here  in  Flanders — 
(It  isn't  strange  to  think  of  You  in  Flanders) 
This  hideous  warfare  seems  to  make  things 

clear. 
We  never  thought  about  You  much  in  Eng- 
land ; 
But  now  that  we  are  far  away  from  England 
We  have  no  doubts,  we  know  that  You  are 
here. 

That  is  where  Jesus  Christ  comes  in. 
The  war,  at  the  start,  was  a  great  trial  to 
most  men's  faith.  They  could  not  under- 
stand a  God  who  withheld  His  hand.  Nor 
could  they  quite  accept  the  Old  Testament 
view  that  even  in  bloodshed  and  agony  God 
is  working  His  purpose  out.  Much  less 
could  they  accept  the  thought  that  the 
nations  were  passing  through  the  furnace 
of  affliction  because  they  had  forsaken  God 
and  that  He  was  using  the  barbarian  as  a 
scourge  in  His  hand  to  bring  men  back  to 
Him.  "  In  the  hand  of  the  Lord  there  is  a 
cup  and  the  wine  is  red;  it  is  full  mixed,  and 
He  poureth  out  of  the  same."  That  seems 
too  much  like  the  figure  of  a  slave  driver. 

Personally,  I  am  quite  sure  that  there  is 
more  in  the  thought  than  we  have  been 


THE  FOKGOTTEN  GOD  65 

penitent  enough  to  admit.  I  do  not  like  the 
way  it  is  put,  any  more  than  I  like  the 
language  of  some  of  the  old  evangelical 
hymns  of  the  atonement;  but  I  am  sure  that 
it  stands  for  a  great  truth,  and  I  believe  that 
a  good  many  men  whose  consciences  are 
better  than  mine  feel  about  it  as  I  do.  I 
see  in  the  world  agony  not  God's  visitation, 
but  the  awful  result  of  man's  violation  of 
His  laws.  The  very  spirit  which  makes 
me  hate  this  evil  is  proof  of  the  God  of 
righteousness  from  whom  my  own  moral 
standards  come.  And  I  wonder,  trembling, 
what  God's  feeling  about  evil  must  be,  if  my 
hatred  of  it  is  so  intense.  Other  men,  I 
know,  feel  as  I  do.  It  was  such  a  man,  in 
the  days  when  the  American  nation  entered 
the  war,  who  said :  "  Some  of  us  have  been 
impatient  for  action ;  we  have  cried  out  from 
time  to  time  '  How  long,  O  Lord,  how 
long?'  But  we  must  now  confess  that  it 
was  wiser  to  endure  for  a  season  until  the 
uprising  of  a  patient  nation  had  become 
akin  to  the  wrath  of  GodP 

The  wrath  of  God!  How  naturally  we 
fall  back  upon  the  expression,  when  our 
own  spirit  is  stirred  within  us.  However, 
let  that  pass.  There  are  many  other  good 
men  who  cannot  see  it  my  way,  and  are  not 


66        THE  EXPEEIMENT  OF  FAITH 

able  to  find  any  possible  form  of  expression 
in  which  it  can  be  embodied  as  an  acceptable 
truth  for  them. 

The  man  who  starts  to  make  the  most  of 
his  half  creed  will  force  himself  to  put  aside 
these  troubled  questionings  for  a  while,  and 
simply  act  on  the  faith  he  has.  In  spite  of 
it  all,  he  believes  in  God.  Let  him  act  as  if 
God  were  and  his  belief  will  grow.  Espe- 
cially let  him  assume  for  the  moment  that 
God  has  revealed  Himself  in  Jesus  Christ. 
Never  mind  (for  the  present)  who  or  what 
Christ  is — at  least  we  owe  Him  the  supreme 
revelation  of  God,  or  (if  you  wish  to  put  it 
that  way)  the  highest  conception  of  jGod. 
To  me  He  is  more  than  that:  He  is  the  very 
unveiling  of  deity.  I  can  hardly  wait  to  put 
this  down  later  in  its  logical  place,  because 
I  believe  so  deeply  that  this  is  just  where 
Jesus  Christ  comes  in.  He  assures  us  of  a 
God  who  is  like  Himself,  and  His  assurance 
helps,  however  difficult  it  may  be  to  under- 
stand, however  seemingly  impossible  to  look 
for  any  clear  light  on  life's  mystery.  At  any 
rate,  God  or  man,  Jesus  Christ  does  make 
the  tragedy  easier  to  endure.  A  man  of 
sorrows  and  acquainted  with  grief,  He  at 
least  takes  His  stand  at  our  side  to  help  us 


THE  FORGOTTEN  GOD  67 

bear  the  burden ;  He  does  not  offer  any  ex- 
planation of  suffering  and  sorrow;  He  does 
something  better,  He  shares  it.  Somehow 
I  feel  that  if  we  stop  to  think  about  that — if 
we  take  time  to  assimilate  it — we  shall  be 
well  on  the  way  to  larger  thoughts  about 
Him  and  deeper  faith  in  the  meaning  of  His 
life.  Well,  that  (to  repeat)  is  where  Christ 
comes  in — the  "  Christ  in  Flanders,"  who  is 
the  Christ  of  Calvary. 

We  think  about  You  kneeling  in  the  Garden — 
Ah,  God !  the  agony  of  that  dread  Garden — 
We  know  You  prayed  for  us  upon  the  Cross. 
If  anything  could  make  us  glad  to  bear  it, 
'Twould  be  the  knowledge  that  You  willed  to 

bear  it — 
Pain — death — the  uttermost  of  human  loss. 

Though  we  forgot  You,  You  will  not  forget 

us — 
We  feel  so  sure  that  You  will  not  forget  us — 
But  stay  with  us  until  this  dream  is  past. 
And  so  we  ask  for  courage,  strength,  and  par- 
don— 
Especially,  I  think,  we  ask  for  pardon — 
And  that  You'll  stand  beside  us  to  the  last. 

The  point  I  have  been  trying  to  make 
clear  is  again  the  argument  of  the  last 
chapter:  Probability  is  enough  to  give  you 
a  start  towards  God.  Here,  as  elsewhere, 
it  is  the  guide  of  life.     On  the  strength  of 


^8        THE  EXPEKIMENT  OF  FAITH 

it,  make  a  beginning.  If  God  really  is,  we 
dare  not  forget  Him.  Do  not  be  guilty  of 
the  absurdity  of  such  reasoning  as  this:  I 
have  thought  it  all  out,  and  on  the  whole, 
and  in  spite  of  the  difficulties,  I  believe  there 
is  a  God.  Therefore — (look  at  it  in  black 
and  white  and  see  how  absurd  it  is !) — there- 
fore, I  am  going  to  act  as  if  He  were  not. 
Rather,  on  the  mere  chance  that  God  is,  I 
am  going  to  try  never  to  forget  that  He  is. 
I  am  going  to  work  hard  to  realize  His 
presence.  I  am  going  to  put  myself  into 
this  work  at  least  as  conscientiously  as  I 
put  myself  into  my  business  or  professional 
work.  If  there  is  a  God,  I  want  to  know 
Him.  At  any  rate,  I  don't  mean  to  forget 
Him,  if  I  can  help  it.  Whether  I  under- 
stand all  or  not,  I  am  not  going  to  forget 
Him  any  longer.  Take  my  word  for  it, 
that  way  lies  the  light. 


VII 
THE  JOYOUS  YEA 

WE  make  a  mistake,  says  Canon 
Adderley,  when  we  contrast  be- 
lief with  atheism  or  agnosticism. 
The  real  contrast  is  between  faith  and 
worldliness,  between  remembering  God  and 
forgetting  Him. 

Truly  the  fact  of  God  ought  to  change 
one's  whole  attitude  towards  life;  for  to 
believe  is  to  say  that  God  is  and  that  this 
is  the  one  thing  that  matters.  Real  faith 
is  not  an  occasional  recollection  of  the 
existence  of  God  and  the  mystery  of  life; 
it  is  a  constant  remembrance  of  God.  It 
is  a  vivid  realization  of  the  spiritual  order. 
It  is  to  feel  that  back  of  the  material  world 
is  a  spiritual  world  which  now  and  then 
breaks  through  the  material  and  gives  the 
attentive  observer  manifestations  of  its 
presence  and  activity.  It  is  to  cease  being 
content  with  the  life  that  is  near  at  hand 
and  always  evident  and  to  stretch  out  to- 
wards the  life  that  is  invisible.  It  is  to  take 
this  invisible  life  for  granted  and  to  try  hard 
69 


70        THE  EXPEBIMENT  OP  FAITH 

to  realize  it.  Not  to  believe  is  simply  to 
omit  the  spiritual  from  our  thinking.  That 
is  what  Adderley  means  when  he  defines 
unbelief  as  humanity  organizing  itself  apart 
from  God.  It  is  what  Eucken  means  when 
he  speaks  of  faith  as  a  sharp  nay  and  a  joy- 
ous yea. 

Now  the  trouble  with  the  ordinary 
doubter — whether  he  is  an  intellectual 
agnostic  who  does  not  think  that  God  can 
be  proved,  or  a  practical  agnostic  who 
ignores  God  and  omits  Him  from  his  calcu- 
lations— is  that  there  is  nothing  at  all  sharp 
about  his  nay  and  yea.  And  the  trouble 
with  the  ordinary  believer  is,  at  bottom,  the 
same;  he  has  simply  fallen  into  the  easy 
habit  of  a  nonchalant  acceptance  of  truth. 
To  him  faith  is  merely  a  formal  acquiescence 
in  certain  statements  out  of  which  he  does 
not  expect  any  new  experiences  for  life. 
He  is  a  believer  but  not  a  seeker.  He  does 
not  understand  that  the  first  effect  of  faith 
should  be  to  drive  him  out  in  a  determined 
effort  to  learn  and  assimilate  truth.  Faith 
merely  starts  with  acquiescence;  it  must 
move  on  to  hope  and  expectation  and  aspira- 
tion, or  else  it  becomes  merely  "  a  dried  up 
acceptance  of  formularies." 

There  is  a  good  deal  of  raw  agnosticism 


THE  JOYOUS  YEA  71 

in  the  world,  but  the  real  tragedy  is  not  in 
this;  it  is  in  the  unthinking  practical  agnos- 
ticism that  labels  itself  faith,  but  is  really 
the  most  hopeless  kind  of  unbelief — the 
thoughtless  indifference  of  apathy. 

Drummond  reminds  us  that  the  soul,  in 
its  highest  sense,  is  a  vast  capacity  for  God. 
"  It  is  like  a  curious  chamber  added  on  to 
being — a  chamber  with  elastic  and  con- 
tractile walls — which,  with  God  as  its  guest, 
can  be  expanded  inimitably,  without  God 
shrinks  and  shrivels  until  every  vestige  of 
the  divine  is  gone." 

This  will  show  that  faith  means  not 
merely  to  assent  to  "  the  joyous  yea,"  but  to 
pursue  it.  If  muscles  that  are  not  used  be- 
come flabby,  if  the  limb  that  is  bound  up 
loses  its  power,  if  the  eye  shut  in  continual 
darkness  would  soon  be  no  better  than  the 
eye  of  a  mole,  if  the  language  no  longer  read 
is  forgotten,  the  spiritual  analogy  ought  to 
be  perfectly  plain.  The  disuse  of  any 
faculties,  physical  or  mental,  is  followed  by 
their  atrophy.  The  failure  to  use  spiritual 
faculties  results  in  the  same  way  in  spiritual 
paralysis.  That  is  the  history  of  many  a 
man  in  his  loss  of  faith.  He  ceases  to  use 
his  spiritual  faculties,  neglects  prayer,  gives 
no  time  to  the  apprehension  of  the  divine, 


72        THE  EXPEKIMENT  OF  FAITH 

leaves  God  out  of  his  thoughts,  and  after  a 
time  he  tries  to  use  the  faculties  of  the  soul 
and  finds  that  they  are  dead.  Because  he 
has  allowed  himself  to  become  immersed  in 
business  or  professional  work,  or  scientific 
pursuits,  to  the  exclusion  of  everything  else, 
and  has  ceased  to  exercise  the  functions  of 
the  spirit,  a  progressive  paralysis  begins, 
which,  unless  checked,  will  end  in  loss  of 
faith  for  himself  and  doubts  as  to  its  reality 
for  others. 

The  peril  stands  out  more  plainly  if  we  re- 
member that  religion  is  the  endeavour  to 
establish  intercourse  with  God.  To  know 
any  friend  intimately  makes  demands  on  us. 
"  Only  now  and  then,  under  the  pressure  of 
interest  and  affection,  do  we  pass  through 
partial  manifestations  of  personality  to  the 
character  behind  them,,,  says  Illingworth, 
"  and  then  in  proportion  to  the  depth  and 
greatness  of  the  character  is  the  difficulty  of 
really  coming  to  know  the  person."  If  it 
is  dangerous  to  trifle  with  a  human  friend- 
ship, how  much  more  dangerous  to  trifle 
with  the  divine !  Faith  is  bound  to  go  if  we 
will  not  make  the  effort  to  have  it  grow. 
With  God  we  cannot  take  a  non-committal, 
half-way  attitude.  "  God  is  everything — or 
nothing."     That  is  what  so  many  of  us  for- 


THE  JOYOUS  YEA  73 

get  In  one  of  Chesterton's  amusing  satires 
an  atheist  and  a  Christian  become  warm 
friends  because  they  are  both  dead  in 
earnest.  In  a  world  of  indifferent  people 
they  two  seem  to  be  the  only  ones  who 
really  care  whether  there  is  a  God  or  not, 
the  only  ones  who  see  how  much  it  matters. 

A  sharp  nay  and  a  joyous  yea !  It  means, 
again,  that  in  an  age  when  men  are  mildly 
indifferent,  the  man  who  has  really  given  in 
his  "  yea  "  to  the  fact  of  God  will  be  eager 
for  truth  and  service.  In  a  day  when  re- 
ligion is  often  merely  a  matter  of  lazy  half- 
interest,  he  will  be  keenly  in  earnest. 
When  so  many  others  have  no  convictions 
and  are  expert  in  balancing  on  the  fence,  he 
will  set  his  ideals  high.  Christianity's  real 
foe  is  not  active  unbelief,  but  the  mild  indif- 
ference and  harmlessness  that  expends  itself 
in  the  effort  to  live  on  terms  of  peace  with 
the  world  and  thinks  of  religion  as  the  last 
thing  on  earth  to  be  excited  about.  The 
trouble  with  a  good  many  men  is  that  they 
haven't  enough  faith  even  to  disbelieve. 
Let  us  have  anything,  therefore — anything 
in  the  world — but  good-natured  toleration. 
Let  it  be  a  sharp  nay  if  it  must.  If  we  do 
believe,  even  a  little  bit,  let  it  be  a  joyous 


74        THE  EXPEKIMENT  OP  FAITH 

yea;  a  yea  so  sure  of  the  truth  to  which  it 
gives  its  glad  assent  that  it  expects  out  of  it 
new  experience  and  fuller  life. 

Jesus  Christ  came  that  men  might  have 
this  life  and  have  it  more  abundantly.  Yet 
He  seems  to  have  been  willing  that  it 
should  come  to  them  slowly  and  by  degrees. 
One  of  the  striking  things  about  His  minis- 
try is  the  gladness  with  which  He  welcomed 
the  most  rudimentary  faith,  if  only  it  were 
genuine,  and  His  perfect  satisfaction  if  only 
He  had  awakened  the  desire  for  God. 

That  comes  out  strongly  in  His  teaching 
of  the  apostles.  Surely  with  them  at  least 
we  should  not  expect  Him  to  be  satisfied 
until  He  had  led  them  all  the  way  along  the 
path  of  faith.  They  were  His  close  friends 
and  we  should  expect  Him  at  once  to  tell 
them  everything.  Yet,  even  with  them,  He 
seems  content  if  only  He  can  be  sure  that 
He  has  made  for  them  the  great  suggestion. 
His  task  was  to  make  them  feel  their  need 
of  God,  until  one  by  one  they  gave  in  to 
Him,  capitulated,  fell  under  His  spell.  He 
spent  His  ministry  in  planting  in  their  hearts 
the  love  of  God  and  the  life  of  godliness, 
out  of  which  all  later  knowledge  should 
grow.     To  put  it  in  another  way,  the  great 


THE  JOYOUS  YEA  75 

work  of  His  ministry  was  to  sensitize  their 
souls. 

How  strange  it  is,  for  example,  that  as 
He  sees  the  time  of  His  departure  draw 
near  there  is  no  oppressive  sense  that  His 
ministry  has  come  to  an  end  too  soon.  The 
apostles  felt  it  keenly.  There  were  so  many 
things  He  had  not  said  and  so  many  things 
He  had  not  done;  they  could  not  bear  to 
lose  Him,  especially  they  could  not  bear  to 
think  of  it  until  He  had  said  all  and  accom- 
plished all.  But  with  Christ  Himself  there 
is  no  sense  of  prematureness  or  incomplete- 
ness in  His  mission.  He  can  leave  these 
followers  of  His,  sure  that  they  are  secure, 
because  He  has  given  them  a  susceptibility 
to  God.  It  was  expedient  for  them  that  He 
go  away,  because  it  was  best  for  them  that 
His  ministry  should  not  be  localized  and 
limited,  and  once  having  given  them  a  habit 
of  mind  that  made  them  responsive  to  God, 
He  could  go  away,  without  anxiety,  in  abso- 
lute certainty  that  they  would  be  led  and 
guided.  The  Spirit  could  work  easily  on 
souls  that  were  sensitized.  The  fruit  of 
faith  would  grow  quickly  out  of  the  soil  of 
such  an  honest  and  good  heart.  Their  faith, 
He  knew,  was  the  faith  of  receptivity.  It 
gave  them  the  "  expanded  soul." 


76        THE  EXPERIMENT  OF  FAITH 

We  need  this  thought  to  balance  and  com- 
plete our  statement  of  the  first  test  of 
religion;  namely,  to  live  true  to  the  truth 
we  know.  That,  it  was  said,  is  all  God  asks. 
Whatever  you  believe,  be  it  much  or  little, 
live  it.  Well,  then,  does  that  mean  that  it 
makes  little  difference  how  much  we  be- 
lieve I  If  all  that  is  asked  of  us  is  obedience 
to  known  truth,  does  it  not  follow  that  the 
less  truth  we  have  the  easier  life  will  be? 
Does  it  not  amount,  after  all,  to  saying  that 
in  the  long  run  truth  matters  very  little? 

Ah,  but  we  know  it  does  matter.  As  a 
man  thinks,  so  is  he.  The  very  value  of  the 
truth  is  that  it  "  assists  life,  makes  life,  in- 
duces life."  Instead  of  fancying  that  those 
who  have  little  truth  to  live  up  to  may  be 
left  happily  alone  in  their  blissful  and 
irresponsible  ignorance,  we  thank  God  that 
there  is  more  truth  to  give  them.  We  our- 
selves would  not  be  content  to  be  pagan 
and  heathen,  just  because  as  civilized  men 
more  is  asked  of  us.  We  would  not  want 
to  be  mere  clods — crude,  ill-bred,  un- 
polished— just  because,  if  we  have  had  the 
advantages  of  culture,  we  shall  be  required 
to  remember  that  we  are  gentlemen.  No- 
body wants  to  live  in  a  back  alley  because  if 
he  lives  on  a  pleasant  street  his  neighbours 


THE  JOYOUS  YEA  77 

will  expect  of  him  the  good  behaviour  and 
moral  decencies  of  avenue  life.  So  in  re- 
ligion, larger  truth  means  larger  apprecia- 
tion, richer  life,  fuller  experience,  deeper 
delights.  We  breathe  a  purer  atmosphere, 
receive  richer  inflowings  of  grace,  have  more 
strength  to  attain  and  more  power  to  serve. 
"  Oh,  do  not  pray  for  easy  lives  " — that 
is  the  way  Phillips  Brooks  put  it — "pray  to 
be  stronger  men.  Do  not  pray  for  tasks 
equal  to  your  powers;  pray  for  powers 
equal  to  your  tasks.  Then  the  doing  of 
your  work  shall  be  no  miracle;  you  shall  be 
the  miracle.  Every  day  you  will  wonder  at 
yourself.  Every  day  you  will  wonder  at 
the  richness  of  life  that  has  come  to  you  as 
God  has  led  you  on  from  faith  to  faith." 


VIII 
A  RADIATING  GOSPEL 

JESUS  CHRIST'S  first  great  contribu- 
tion to  faith  was  His  unwavering  be- 
lief in  God  as  Father.  His  proclama- 
tion of  that  truth  took  new  form.  God  was 
"  Our  Father  " :  the  divine  fatherhood  and 
human  brotherhood  went  together.  And 
there  was  no  limit  to  the  Father's  family: 
all  men,  everywhere,  were  His  children, 
brethren  in  different  rooms  of  the  Father's 
house. 

Nothing  could  make  Christ's  faith  in  the 
Father  falter.  We  are  troubled,  for  ex- 
ample, over  the  problem  of  evil.  The  world 
seems  sometimes  "  a  great  orphanage " 
rather  than  the  home  of  a  Heavenly 
Father's  children.  Surely  Jesus  Christ 
must  have  felt  this  more  keenly  than  we. 
His  soul  was  like  a  delicately  adjusted  in- 
strument which  recorded  every  human 
doubt  and  difficulty,  all  human  suffering  or 
sin;  yet  He  still  proclaimed  God  as  Father 
and  acted  on  the  belief,  and  though  a  man 
78 


A  KADIATING  GOSPEL  79 

of  sorrows  and  acquainted  with  grief  He 
proclaimed  His  faith  to  the  end.  All  the 
world  now  is  fighting  to  vindicate  this  idea — 
the  thing  which  Germany  repudiated.  It 
troubles  us  that  Christians  should  be  forced 
to  fight;  but  it  makes  a  world  of  difference 
when  we  fight  because  it  is  the  only  means 
we  know  to  be  effective,  things  being  as  they 
are,  to  stop  a  war  of  deliberate  aggression. 
And  what  is  it  we  fight  for?  Something 
some  of  us  had  forgotten  we  believed  in — 
the  common  rights  and  mutual  duties  of  all 
mankind,  based  on  the  Fatherhood  of  God 
and  the  brotherhood  of  the  race ;  something 
which  the  world  never  even  thought  of  as 
an  actuality  until  Jesus  Christ  made  it  the 
constitution  of  His  kingdom. 

The  idea  of  the  fatherhood  of  God  and 
the  consequent  brotherhood  of  men  was  a 
new  conception — new,  not  because  it  had 
never  been  uttered  before,  but  because  never 
before  had  it  been  set  at  work.  It  was  a 
truth  that  had  been  lying  dormant.  The 
Jews  had  wonderful  passages  in  their 
prophetic  writings  which  told  of  the  father- 
hood of  God,  but  they  never  dreamed  that 
His  care  extended  alike  over  all  the  nations 
of  the  earth;  they  were  born  to  national 
isolation  and  reared  in  race  exclusiveness. 


80        THE  EXPEBIMENT  OF  FAITH 

In  the  Greek  and  Roman  world  also  the  idea 
had  found  expression.  Terence  had  a  fine 
phrase  in  one  of  his  plays  about  human 
brotherhood  which  won  loud  applause  in  the 
theatre,  and  Cicero  wrote  charmingly  about 
love  for  all  mankind;  but  both  Cicero  and 
Terence  merely  played  with  the  thought  as 
a  pretty  fancy  and  the  gladiatorial  contests 
continued  to  draw  crowds  to  the  arena. 
Then  Jesus  Christ  took  the  idea  which  up 
to  that  time  had  been  a  pretty  fancy  or  a 
racial  boast,  and  made  it  the  basis  of  His 
world  kingdom.  The  wonderful  thing  is 
that  when  men  begin  to  live  true  to  the 
truth  which  Christ  made  vital  they  catch 
something  of  Christ's  faith.  Just  the 
moment  we  cease  to  allow  the  thought  of 
human  brotherhood  to  remain  a  cant  ex- 
pression and  try  to  translate  it  into  warm 
reality,  we  rise  through  the  realization  of 
our  common  brotherhood  into  a  firmer  faith 
in  the  Divine  Father. 

The  great  world  war  could  never  have 
broken  upon  us  had  men  been  making  any 
real  effort  to  live  this  elemental  truth. 
Everywhere  we  were  content,  rather,  to 
talk  about  it  eloquently  without  actually 
trying  to  get  down  below  the  surface  differ- 


A  EADIATING  GOSPEL  81 

ences  of  race  and  dialect  and  to  learn  the 
mother  tongue  of  the  human  heart. 

Just  now,  I  know,  we  need  especially  to 
pray  hard  for  deliverance  from  national 
self-righteousness,  and  so  there  is  a  certain 
danger  in  using  Germany  too  frequently  as 
an  "  awful  example  " ;  yet  Germany  has  been 
so  glaring  an  instance  of  the  tragic  conse- 
quences of  a  self-centered  development, 
that  it  is  hardly  possible  to  leave  the  moral 
undrawn.  For  forty  years  its  people  had 
learned  and  repeated  "  Prussian  incanta- 
tions "  until  there  was  built  about  the  nation 
a  "  wall  of  moral  isolation."  At  home  and 
in  church,  in  every  social  class,  as  the 
first  lessons  of  school  and  the  last  in  the 
university,  Germany's  people  were  drilled, 
with  painstaking  efficiency,  into  a  colossal 
national  self-glorification  and  self-adoration 
and  a  boundless  contempt  for  the  rest  of  the 
world.  German  needs,  German  hopes,  Ger- 
man ambitions,  German  aspirations  filled  all 
their  thoughts ;  and  they  ignorantly  followed 
rulers  who  exercised  lordship  over  them  and 
desired  to  use  them  to  extend  this  lordship 
over  all  the  earth. 

When  that  is  said,  however,  we  must  have 
a  care  lest  we  be  carrying  a  "  moral  um- 
brella "  that  shields  us  from  criticism  and 


82        THE  EXPERIMENT  OP  FAITH 

permits  it  to  fall  the  more  copiously  on  all 
around  us!  How  absurd  to  point  to  Ger- 
many's amazing  tribal  arrogance,  so  un- 
restrained and  unashamed,  when  the  root 
of  the  sin  is  found  in  every  nation.  Look 
at  England.  Her  insularity  was  more  than 
physical.  How  little  pains  she  had  taken  to 
understand  the  rest  of  the  world;  how  often 
the  supercilious  superiority  of  the  English 
traveller  had  fanned  the  flames  of  national 
hatred.  The  average  Englishman  lived  in 
utter  indifference,  if  not  in  utter  ignorance 
of  other  peoples.  Even  with  a  world  em- 
pire to  be  governed,  his  political  leaders 
often  gloried  in  their  own  intellectual  isola- 
tion. And  here  in  America,  "the  melting 
pot  of  the  nations,"  we  were  deaf  to  the 
opportunity  which  cried  at  our  doors. 
With  multitudes  coming  here  of  many 
kindreds  and  tongues,  we  had  made  little 
effort  to  fashion  these  millions  of  foreign 
born  into  one  loyal  and  happy  people.  Not 
till  war  revealed  the  national  peril  did  we 
begin  to  labour  for  a  deeper  unity.  We 
were  content  to  live  side  by  side  in  race 
isolation  and  often  in  race  antagonism,  even 
as  we  were  living  in  class  exclusiveness  and 
class  antipathy. 

Class  exclusiveness  and  class  antipathy! 


A  KADIATING  GOSPEL  83 

Ah !  how  recreant  we  had  been  to  the  great 
cause  of  brotherhood  for  which  men  of  other 
days  willingly  gave  their  lives !  A  striking 
war  poem  pictures  the  martyred  men  of  the 
first  British  armies  calling  on  the  men  of 
to-day  to  "  take  up  their  quarrel  with  the 
foe." 

In  Flanders  fields  the  poppies  grow 
Between  the  crosses,  row  on  row, 
That  mark  our  place ;  and  in  the  sky 
The  larks  still  bravely  singing  fly. 

We  are  the  dead.     Short  days  ago 
We  lived,  felt  dawn,  saw  sunsets  glow, 
Loved  and  were  loved,  and  now  we  lie 
In  Flanders  fields. 

Take  up  our  quarrel  with  the  foe ; 
To  you  from  falling  hands  we  throw 
The  torch ;  be  yours  to  bear  it  high ; 
If  ye  break  faith  with  us  who  die 
We  shall  not  sleep,  though  poppies  blow 
In  Flanders  fields. 

So  the  noble  army  of  Christian  martyrs 
calls  on  us — not  "  to  take  up  a  quarrel,"  but 
to  bear  the  torch  of  truth  and  not  to  break 
faith.  How  we  had  forgotten  that  faith ! 
We  shudder  as  we  read  of  the  thousands  of 
lives  lost  in  war;  but  we  had  been  resting 
in  complacent  content  while  thousands  of 


84        THE  EXPEEIMENT  OP  FAITH 

lives  were  sacrificed  in  times  of  peace, 
through  ignorance,  drudgery,  poverty  and 
disease.  They  were  our  brothers  and  sis- 
ters, yet  we  did  not  feel  their  heartache. 
"  You  care  a  lot  about  me  " — so  the  poor, 
murdered  factory  girl  of  Georgia  is  made 
to  say  in  Mary  Phagan  Passes  Judgment — 
"  You  care  a  lot  about  me,  now  that  I  am 
dead;  you  have  spent  thousands  of  dollars 
trying  to  learn  who  mutilated  my  body; 
you  have  broken  into  prison  and  murdered 
a  man,  that  I  might  be  avenged.  But  why 
did  you  not  care  for  me  when  I  was  alive? 
I  was  but  a  child,  but  you  shut  me  out  of  the 
sunlight.  You  held  me  within  four  walls, 
watching  a  machine  that  crashed  through 
the  air,  endlessly  watching  a  knife  as  it  cut 
a  piece  of  wood.  Noise  filled  the  place — 
noise,  dust,  the  smell  of  oil  and  bad  air. 
Why  did  you  despise  me  living,  and  yet  love 
me  so  now?  I  think  I  know.  It  is  like 
what  the  preacher  told  me  about  Christ: 
people  hated  Him  when  He  was  alive,  but 
when  He  was  dead  they  killed  man  after 
man  for  His  sake." 

So  in  the  world  of  nations  and  in  the 
world  of  industry  we  had  alike  forgotten  of 
what  spirit  we  are ! 

"  The  nation  is  only  the  larger  individual.** 


A  BADIATING  GOSPEL  85 

All  the  while  there  had  been  the  call  to  each 
one  of  us  to  break  down  the  barriers  of  class 
and  bring  all,  high  and  low,  rich  and  poor, 
head-workers  and  hand-workers,  people  of 
leisure  and  people  of  toil,  into  a  closer  unity 
where  each  could  be  interpreted  to  the  other 
and  all  could  live  and  work  together  with 
mutual  understanding  and  mutual  respect, 
and  few  of  us  were  heeding  the  call.  Per- 
haps in  the  Christian  Church  as  nowhere 
else  there  was  a  real  attempt  to  mediate 
between  classes.  Despite  the  Church's 
natural  conservatism,  and  despite  its  seem- 
ing lethargy,  there  have  always  been 
prophets  to  interpret  it  to  itself.  Chris- 
tianity has  shown  a  miraculous  power  of 
reform  and  resuscitation,  and  in  the  present 
era  of  social  regeneration  that  power  is 
manifest  as  never  before.  Whatever  criti- 
cism may  rightly  be  made  against  institu- 
tional Christianity,  none  has  been  more 
acute  than  that  which  its  own  sons  have 
uttered,  and  among  all  who  are  preaching 
the  new  religion  of  sacrifice  and  service  no- 
where has  the  message  been  delivered  with 
greater  fervour  and  power  than  in  Christian 
pulpits.  In  every  church  there  are  brave 
souls  recalling  Christianity  to  its  Lord  and 
voicing,    for    others   without,    their   vague 


86        THE  EXPERIMENT  OP  FAITH 

longings  for  a  deeper  brotherhood.  Not 
long  since  one  such  called  on  well-to-do 
Christians  to  convince  the  world  that  they 
had  indeed  "  broken  through  into  reality  " 
by  making  sacrifices  on  a  large  scale  and 
becoming  chief  agents  in  destroying  all 
undue  privilege  by  which  they  and  their 
class  could  profit. 

Miss  Vida  Scudder  is  one  of  a  group  of 
women  who  combine  in  a  remarkable  way  a 
passion  for  social  reform  and  an  abiding 
faith  in  the  power  of  Christianity  to  give  to 
the  coming  social,  industrial  and  economic 
readjustment  a  deeply  religious  note.  She 
reminds  us  that  many  of  our  present  diffi- 
culties in  the  prosecution  of  the  war  are  due 
to  past  failure  to  realize  the  obligations  of 
brotherhood.  To  take  an  outstanding  illus- 
tration, "it  is  worth  remembering,"  she 
tells  us,  "  that  had  American  cities  been 
nearer  to  our  own  ideals  Russia  might  have 
been  held  to  firm  fellowship  with  us  and  our 
allies.  We  always  meant  to  clean  up  those 
New  York  slums — some  day.  We  always 
meant  to  give  that  last  man  his  chance,  to 
lift  that  appalling  per  cent,  of  our  working 
population  above  the  starvation  line — some 
day.  But  we  were  not  in  the  least  of  a 
hurry.     History  was  in  a  hurry,  however; 


A  EADIATING  GOSPEL  87 

and  word  reached  Russia  that  American 
democracy  was  a  sham." 

Who  shall  say  that  we  may  not,  even  now, 
hear  the  call?  Are  there  not  signs  that  at 
last  the  challenge  has  been  measurably  ac- 
cepted in  these  days  of  war,  when  many 
who  had  ruled  men,  industrially  and  politic- 
ally, have  become  true  servants  of  democ- 
racy and  are  revealing  potentialities  of 
patriotism  long  unsuspected,  as  well  as 
demonstrating  literally  their  desire  to  give 
rather  than  to  possess?  War  has  not  been 
without  its  compensations,  and  not  the  least 
of  them  has  been  a  new  understanding  of 
the  privilege  of  power  and  a  new  apprecia- 
tion of  the  debt  it  owes  to  the  community. 

Has  the  man  outside  quite  realized  all 
that  this  means?  Has  he  quite  appreciated 
how  much  of  this  inspiration  for  service  has 
come  from  the  churches?  As  he  takes  his 
own  place  in  the  ranks  of  the  new  brother- 
hood, has  he  quite  understood  that  it  is  all 
a  rebirth  of  the  spirit  of  Christ?  Does  he 
find  in  it  no  call  to  consider  with  himself  the 
significance  of  that  fact? 

Once  more :  is  not  the  new  spirit  of  public 
service  a  call  to  all  of  us,  within  the  Church 
and  without,  to  try  out  the  fact  of  human 
brotherhood    in    our    private    relationship? 


88        THE  EXPEBIMENT  OF  FAITH 

"  Be  a  part  of  some  other  man's  life,"  says 
one  whose  words  had  the  lifting  quality  of  a 
true  prophet  of  God — "be  a  part  of  some 
other  man's  life,  his  hopes  and  fears,  his 
joys  and  pains.  Do  not  be  satisfied  with 
seeing  men  divided  off  into  sets  and  parties 
and  stations.  Get  down  below  these  things 
and  become  simply  human.  Dream  the 
most  wonderful  of  all  dreams,  that  men  are 
brothers  all  and  sharers  of  one  another's 
destinies." 

It  seems  a  far  cry  from  all  this  to  the 
Church's  missionary  service,  but  is  it  not 
essentially  the  same  thing?  For  what  are 
Christian  missions  but  Christian  brother- 
hood on  a  large  scale?  And  what  was 
Christ's  message  but  a  radiating  Gospel? 
That  is  the  reason  we  preach  Christianity 
everywhere:  not  because  we  question 
whether  any  of  our  fellow  men  can  be  saved 
without  Christianity ;  but  because  we  know, 
apart  from  any  questions  of  their  eternal 
welfare,  that  they  need  it  now.  It  means 
so  much  to  us,  that  we  are  unwilling  to  keep 
it  to  ourselves. 

It  would  be  daring,  perhaps,  to  say  that 
the  man  outside  will  be  won  only  when  the 
Church  realizes  its  world-wide  missionary 


A  KADIATING  GOSPEL  89 

call;  but  is  it  too  much  to  say,  when  we 
remember  that  missionary  enthusiasm  is 
really  but  the  expression  of  the  Church's 
belief  in  its  world-wide  mission,  and  when 
the  fulfillment  of  that  mission  means  that 
the  Church  has  at  last  begun  to  live  true  to 
the  truth  of  human  brotherhood,  at  last  has 
risen  above  parochialism  and  nationalism 
and  has  attempted  the  larger  task  of  making 
of  one  blood  all  the  peoples  of  the  earth? 

Now  and  then  we  are  reminded  of  a  cloud 
rising  in  the  East  which  possibly  may  grow 
till  a  storm  breaks  as  terrible  as  the  present 
world  war.  The  danger  is  again  and  again 
denied,  of  course;  but  we  know  that  many 
of  the  men  who  will  be  the  future  leaders  of 
Japan  have  cast  off  their  old  religion,  as 
have  the  leaders  of  China.  Suppose,  when 
they  come  into  their  power,  they  have  no 
new  religion,  no  new  moral  standards,  no 
sure  moral  guide — shall  we  not  have  a  peril 
worse  than  Prussianism,  with  its  practical 
repudiation  of  Christianity?  And  then  sup- 
pose, on  the  other  hand,  they  have  been 
taught  the  radiating  Gospel  of  the  Christ 
who  first  made  brotherhood  a  living  truth 
and  proclaimed  it  as  the  basis  of  His  king- 
dom— would  not  that  help  to  make  the 
world  u  safe  for  democracy  "  ?     Not  with- 


90        THE  EXPEKIMENT  OF  FAITH 

out  reason  did  Jesus  Christ  leave  to  His 
Church  a  world  commission. 

Only  through  Me!    The  clear,  high  call  comes 
pealing 
Above  the  thunders  of  the  battle-plain  — 
Only  through  Me  can  Life's  red  wounds  find 
healing ; 
Only  through  Me  shall  earth  have  peace  again. 

Only    through    Me!     Love's    might,    all    might 
transcending, 

Alone  can  draw  the  poison  fangs  of  hate. 
Yours  the  beginning!     Mine  a  nobler  ending  — 

Peace  upon  earth,  and  man  regenerate ! 

Only  through  Me  can  come  the  great  awakening ! 

Wrong  cannot  right  the  wrongs  that  Wrong 
hath  done; 
Only  through  Me,  all  other  gods  forsaking, 

Can  ye  attain  the  heights  that  must  be  won. 

Can  we  not  rise  to  such  great  height  of  glory? 

Shall  this  vast  sorrow  spend  itself  in  vain? 
Shall  future  ages  tell  the  woeful  story  — 

Christ  by  His  own  was  crucified  again  ? 


And  so  to  the  Church  and  to  the  un- 
attached Christian  the  challenge  is  the  same. 
Only  as  the  Church  realizes  its  mission,  will 
its  appeal  to  the  man  outside  become  an 
insistent  and  ringing  challenge,  for  it  will 
show  him  a  call  at  home  more  fully  realized 
and  a  world  call  merging  into  it.     It  would 


A  KADIATING  GOSPEL  91 

seem  to  be  the  one  challenge  that  cannot  be 
evaded.  Tell  a  man  that  he  must  be  indi- 
vidually converted  and  come  into  the 
Church  to  keep  his  personal  salvation  secure, 
and  you  have  at  most  a  selfish  summons ;  it 
does  not  challenge  faith.  But  tell  him  what 
the  kingdom  of  God  means;  tell  him  that 
the  Church  is  the  nucleus  of  the  kingdom; 
tell  him  that  its  business  is  the  establish- 
ment of  human  brotherhood;  tell  him  that 
this  will  mean  a  new  social  order;  tell  him 
that  many  men  in  the  Church  are  trying  to 
interpret  for  it  this  radiating  Gospel;  tell 
him  that  they  want  his  help  in  establishing 
God's  rule  over  every  department  of  human 
life ;  tell  him  that  the  simplest  belief  in  the 
Fatherhood  of  God  is  a  summons  to  join  the 
ranks  of  a  world  army;  tell  him  that  this 
army  is  to  "  war  against  war  "  by  giving  the 
coming  nations  of  the  earth  a  spirit  other 
than  "  tribal  allegiance  "  and  "  national  self- 
glorification  " — and  to  that  call  he  may  give 
his  joyous  yea;  in  that  he  sees  a  splendid 
vision. 


IX 

THE  ESSENCE  OF  PRAYER 

IN  Jesus  Christ's  teaching  of  the  divine 
Fatherhood  is  the  only  faith  in  God 
worth  having.  "  Better  no  God,"  says 
Canon  McComb,  "  than  a  God  other  or  less 
than  the  God  of  Jesus." 

The  reason  is  plain :  because  faith  in  God 
as  Father  assumes  that  He  is  a  Person  with 
whom  we  may  have  conscious  relationship 
and  intercourse.  Few  men  have  not  some 
realization,  more  or  less  intense,  of  a 
Supreme  Power  bearing  some  sort  of  rela- 
tion to  the  world.  Whether  they  have  read 
his  philosophy  or  not,  they  agree  with 
Herbert  Spencer  that  "  it  is  absolutely  cer- 
tain that  we  are  ever  in  the  presence  of  an 
Infinite  and  Eternal  Energy  out  of  which  all 
things  proceed."  Sometimes  the  thought 
is  borne  in  upon  us  with  special  force, 
burdening  us  with  the  sense  of  an  Awful 
Presence.  We  think  about  God,  when  we 
do  think  about  Him,  with  momentary  awe 
and  oppression,  much  as  the  child  thinks  of 
the  darkness  or  the  thunder.  But  Jesus 
92 


THE  ESSENCE  OP  PEAYEE  93 

tells  us  of  a  God  who  is  a  Person,  not  merely 
a  Power  or  a  Principle,  and  if  a  Person  then 
one  who  can  be  known  and  loved  and 
served;  one  with  whom  we  may  have  com- 
munion and  companionship.  That  is  vital; 
it  is  of  personal  interest  and  importance;  it 
means  something  to  me — and  to  others  like 
me.  Nothing  else  that  I  may  come  to  ac- 
cept about  God  matters  in  comparison  with 
it ;  nothing  matters  at  all,  if  this  is  not  true. 
"  A  God  to  whom  we  cannot  pray  is  no  God 
at  all/' 

There  can  be  no  developed  personal  life 
without  companionship.  The  full  life  de- 
mands close  and  intimate  relationship.  The 
man  who  has  no  friend  is  but  half  a  man. 

And  the  man  who  does  not  pray  is  at- 
tempting to  live  his  life  in  isolation. 

In  the  narrower  life  of  the  village  or  coun- 
try community  we  see  often  the  peril  of 
isolation.  Removed  from  the  centers  of 
thought  and  activity,  the  man  of  the  small 
town  is  likely  to  live  a  contracted  life,  alone 
and  aloof,  thinking  only  of  the  things  which 
concern  himself.  It  need  not  be  so.  There 
are  fine  things  to  be  done  if  he  can  be  made 
to  see  them.  Master  minds  of  literature 
open  to  him  inspiring  conceptions  of  duty, 


94       THE  EXPEKIMENT  OF  FAITH 

if  only  some  one  will  introduce  him  to  them. 
In  the  quiet  life  of  the  small  community, 
freed  from  the  excitements  and  distractions 
of  the  restless  city,  there  is  splendid  oppor- 
tunity for  the  rich  growth  of  personality. 
No  one  who  has  read  David  Grayson's 
charming  essays  can  have  failed  to  discover 
that  it  is  possible  to  see  truth  more  clearly, 
and  in  seeing  to  enrich  life  more  fully,  in 
the  quiet  of  nature  and  among  a  few  real 
friends,  than  in  the  strain  and  stress  of  the 
crowded  city.  Yet  the  fact  is,  that  without 
close  contact  with  the  larger  world  the 
provincial  dweller  generally  grows  steadily 
more  provincial.  His  outlook  on  life  con- 
tracts; his  personality  shrinks  and  shrivels. 
In  the  first  centuries  of  Christianity  the 
pagan  was  simply  the  countryman — the 
isolated  man  of  the  distant  places,  whose 
life  was  unrelated  to  the  larger  civilized 
order. 

Now  what  we  need  to  understand  is  that, 
religiously  speaking,  the  man  who  does  not 
pray  is  a  "  pagan  " ;  that  is,  a  solitary  man, 
living  apart  from  God,  unrelated  to  the 
Source  of  Life. 

Here,  however,  is  some  one  who  freely 
admits  all  this  and  yet  cannot  pray  because 


THE  ESSENCE  OP  PEAYEE  95 

he  cannot  be  sure  he  believes  in  the  reality 
of  prayer.  All  the  difficulties  of  prayer 
thrust  themselves  into  his  mind  against  his 
will.  Why  should  a  loving  God  withhold 
any  gift  from  His  children  until  they  ask 
for  it?  Why  does  God,  seemingly,  leave 
unanswered  the  prayers  of  good  men? 
What  value  is  there  in  intercessory  prayer — 
prayer  for  others  who  may  be  making  no 
move  themselves?  How  can  he  believe  any 
longer  in  what  we  used  to  call  Providence ; 
much  less,  how  can  he  believe  in  a  special 
Providence  that  shapes  particular  lives? 
He  is  unable  to  reconcile  prayer  with  the 
reign  of  law  and  the  uniformity  of  nature's 
processes. 

That  is  the  great  difficulty  we  have  been 
obliged  to  face  in  these  days  of  war  when 
prayer  has  seemed  so  unavailing.  Probably 
more  prayers  have  been  offered  than  for 
many  years.  Men  and  women  who  had 
long  since  ceased  to  pray  or  had  done  so  in 
perfunctory  obedience  to  custom  have  now 
been  driven  to  pray  often  and  anxiously  and 
earnestly.  Yet  with  their  prayers  have 
come  new  doubts  and  difficulties.  And  for 
the  many  who  have  prayed  as  never  before, 
there  are  almost  as  many  others  who  have 
ceased  to  pray,  because  they  are  determined 


96        THE  EXPEKIMENT  OP  FAITH 

to  be  honest  with  themselves.  Face  to  face 
with  the  great  realities  of  sin,  sorrow,  suffer- 
ing and  death,  they  have  felt  the  demand  for 
utter  reality  in  religion  and  they  will  not  do 
what  seems  unreal.  The  old  ideas  of  Provi- 
dence are  gone,  and  they  are  not  blinding 
themselves  to  the  fact.  Many  a  man  who 
has,  with  deeper  seriousness,  laid  hold  on 
great  elemental  truths  and  faced  life  with 
more  resolute  earnestness,  will  confess 
nevertheless  that  he  is  not  a  praying  man. 

For  we  cannot  put  ourselves  into  any- 
thing if  we  are  not  really  convinced  that  it 
is  worth  while;  and  prayer  as  he  knows  it 
has  not  been  worth  while,  he  thinks.  In 
times  of  great  danger  he  and  his  friends  have 
prayed  and  the  danger  did  not  pass.  In 
times  of  impending  sorrow  they  prayed  but 
death  came  none  the  less  certainly.  In 
times  of  distress  he  himself  has  agonized  in 
prayer  and  the  heavens  were  closed  and  God 
did  not  answer.  Why  expect  that  He 
would?  There  are  laws  of  health  and  they 
work  with  inevitable  regularity;  there  are 
laws  of  economics  and  ruin  follows  their 
violation;  there  are  larger  laws  of  nature 
and  though  slow  of  operation  they  are  al- 
ways sure. 

Suppose  we  ask  such  a  doubting  ques- 


THE  ESSENCE  OF  PEAYEE  97 

tioner  to  apply  religion's  ultimate  test.  Is 
there  nothing  he  accepts  about  prayer?  If 
he  has  some  small  grain  of  belief,  what  is  it? 
How  far  can  he  go? 

In  nine  cases  out  of  ten  the  answer  will 
be  the  same :  Yes,  after  a  fashion  I  believe 
in  what  you  call  prayer;  but  I  explain  its 
effect  psychologically.  Prayer  is  a  sub- 
jective influence.  Those  five  or  ten  minutes 
now  and  then  help ;  they  soothe,  calm,  uplift, 
enlighten.  But  beyond  that  I  know  noth- 
ing. Whether  the  strength  comes  from 
God,  or  whether  it  is  my  own  mental  re- 
action, I  cannot  say.  All  that  I  know  is 
that  the  attempt  at  divine  communion  brings 
something  of  peace  and  strength. 

Well,  is  not  that  a  fair  start?  Pray  just 
that  way.  On  the  whole,  you  believe  there 
is  a  God,  though  you  are  not  quite  sure 
what  we  mean  by  calling  Him  a  Person. 
Assume  that  He  is  and  speak  to  Him. 
With  all  your  doubt  and  uncertainty,  with- 
out philosophical  assurance,  pray  neverthe- 
less. The  wonderful  thing  is,  that  the  man 
who  begins  prayer  in  that  spirit  invariably 
gains  a  fuller  faith.  The  reason  so  many  of 
us  do  not  believe  in  prayer  more  confidently 
is  because  we  have  not  practiced  it  more 
faithfully. 


98        THE  EXPEEIMENT  OP  FAITH 

And  then  there  is  this  to  be  said,  that  pos- 
sibly the  man's  very  doubt  is  indeed  a  hint 
towards  the  correction  of  a  false  conception. 
After  all,  has  it  not  really  thrown  him  back 
upon  the  primary  purpose  of  prayer?  It  is 
a  distorted  idea  of  prayer,  which  regards  it 
principally  as  petition.  In  fact,  one's  assur- 
ance of  the  subjective  power  of  prayer  is  a 
suggestion  that  he  actually  has  the  germ  of 
right  faith.  It  may  draw  him  into  an  effort 
towards  the  kind  of  devotion  God  wants. 

For,  indeed,  the  more  he  thinks  of  it  the 
more  he  will  come  to  feel  that  the  effect  of 
prayer  is  a  far  greater  thing  than  his  own 
subjective  reaction.  He  will  begin  to  feel 
that  in  reality  it  is  intercourse  with  a  Per- 
son. Sometimes  the  religion  of  Christ 
seems  hard  to  grasp  because  it  is  so  pro- 
found; but  really  it  is  easy  to  grasp  because 
it  is  so  absolutely  human.  We  ourselves 
are  persons,  and  we  know  how  one  person 
understands  and  absorbs  another,  how  one 
man's  heart  feeds  on  the  heart  of  another. 
We  know  men  who  by  their  mere  presence 
make  us  strong.  There  are  men  in  whose 
friendship  courage  and  faith  and  large- 
heartedness  feed  and  grow.  In  their 
presence  we  cannot  be  weak  or  petty  or 
unbelieving. 


THE  ESSENCE  OP  PRAYER  99 

Now  what  is  prayer  in  its  essence  but 
placing  oneself  in  the  presence  of  the  divine 
Friend  and  absorbing  His  life?  It  means 
not  the  changing  of  God's  mind  towards  us, 
but  the  changing  of  our  whole  frame  of 
mind  towards  Him.  It  means  spending 
some  time  with  Him,  a  long  time  if  need  be, 
because  it  takes  a  long  time  to  change  the 
whole  tone  and  temper  of  a  man's  soul  and 
free  it  from  everything  that  cannot  be 
countenanced  in  one  of  God's  children. 

Even  if  we  cannot  see  this  at  first  we  go 
on  with  the  experiment  of  prayer;  for, 
taking  it  at  its  lowest  estimate,  the  experi- 
ence means  at  least  a  development  of  one's 
inner  life  and  without  that  personality 
evaporates.  "  The  man  who  has  no  refuge 
within  himself,"  writes  Amiel,  "who  lives, 
so  to  speak,  in  his  front  rooms,  is  not  a 
personality  at  all." 

Yet  surely  the  man  who  prays  will  dis- 
cover that  his  prayer  is  more  than  personal 
self-development.  The  very  fact  that  leads 
us  to  believe  there  is  a  God  compels  us  to 
believe  He  is  a  personal  God.  From  Him 
come  all  things  and  He  is  more  than  the 
sum  of  all  things  created.  The  greatest 
thing  about  me  is  my  personality,  and  there 
must  be  something  in  God  akin  to  that,  an 


100      THE  EXPERIMENT  OP  PAITH 

infinite  Something  of  which  my  human  per- 
sonality is  the  finite  reflection.  God  is  a 
person,  not  a  principle.  And  all  that  we 
know  of  personal  growth  and  development 
suggests,  as  has  just  been  pointed  out,  that 
it  comes  not  merely  from  self-introspection 
but  from  contact  with  personalities  stronger 
than  our  own.  It  is  but  a  step  from  our 
subjective  experience  of  the  power  of  soli- 
tude to  the  discovery  that  when  we  are 
most  alone  we  are  really  not  alone.  We 
begin  to  be  conscious  that  we  are  in  a  divine 
presence  and  that  the  strength  which  we 
receive  is  not  a  reflex  of  our  own  will  but 
an  inflowing  of  personal  power  from  with- 
out. 

Is  not  all  this  leading  us  to  understand 
better  what  prayer  is?  It  is  the  opening  of 
the  soul  to  the  breeze  of  heaven.  Or,  better 
(for  we  must  not  phrase  it  in  anything  but 
the  language  of  personality)  it  is  the  up- 
lifted heart.  That  is  the  way  the  psalmist 
defined  it.  "  Show  Thou  me  the  way  that 
I  should  walk  in ;  for  I  lift  up  my  soul  unto 
Thee."  It  is  the  effort  of  the  human  spirit 
to  place  itself  in  conscious  relationship  with 
the  divine  Spirit.  It  is  the  soul  looking 
Godward.  It  means  "  bringing  God  and  the 
soul  together  and  leaving  them  alone."     If 


THE  ESSENCE  OF  PEAYEE         101 

it  does  nothing  else  for  us,  we  may  well  be 
content  if  it  brings  us  some  new  conscious- 
ness of  the  supernatural,  the  eternal,  the 
divine.  "  The  man  who  rises  from  his  knees 
and  goes  out  to  his  daily  task  unable  to  dis- 
cern any  answer  to  those  moments  of  suppli- 
cation save  a  new  assurance  that  God  is  with 
him  has  answer  enough,"  says  Bishop 
McLaren;  "he  has  put  out  his  hand  in  the 
darkness  and  even  though  it  be  for  the 
briefest  second  he  has  touched  the  Divine 
Hand." 

Now  we  see  why  the  prayerless  man  is  a 
pagan.  He  has  been  living  apart  and  un- 
related— out  of  touch  with  God.  Then  he 
begins  to  pray,  in  the  simplest  possible  way, 
without  much  more  in  his  mind  than  that  he 
means  to  relate  himself  to  God,  and  at  once 
something  happens.  He  finds  that  he  sees 
life  more  as  God  must  see  it;  he  does  his 
work  more  in  God's  way;  he  lives  his  life 
more  as  a  member  of  the  Father's  family. 

We  cannot  go  before  God  in  that  way 
without  unconsciously  taking  His  point  of 
view.  Companionship  produces  resem- 
blance. Association  with  men  of  the  large 
heart  makes  us  grow  into  the  likeness  of  our 
associates;  and  companionship  with  God 
makes  us  more  like  God.     It  gives  incentive 


102      THE  EXPEEIMENT  OF  FAITH 

to  do  one's  best  in  the  things  known  only  to 
self  and  hidden  from  all  others. 

Now  the  wonder  of  Christ's  teaching 
about  God  is  that  it  just  takes  all  this  for 
granted.  God  is  Father;  then,  of  course,  it 
follows  that  we  are  to  live  with  Him ;  then, 
of  course,  we  are  to  speak  with  Him ;  then 
the  essence  of  faith  is  to  keep  the  soul  recep- 
tive to  His  influence. 

So  the  man  who  acts  on  his  small  bit  of 
faith  moves  on  to  larger  faith.  As  he  prays 
he  learns  that  essentially  prayer  is  conversa- 
tion with  God.  If  that  is  true,  then  there  is 
nothing  about  which  he  may  not  speak  with 
God,  and  speak  simply  and  naturally. 

If  he  thinks  more  about  the  prayers  of 
Jesus,  however,  he  will  learn  that  his  prayer 
must  take  account  of  some  of  the  difficulties 
which  troubled  him  in  the  beginning. 
These  difficulties,  even  when  viewed  in  the 
light  of  his  new  experience,  will  not  dis- 
appear, but  they  will  lead  to  an  adjustment 
of  his  petitionary  prayer — an  adjustment 
which  will  rob  it  of  much  that  he  has  been 
accustomed  to  regard  as  precious,  it  is  true, 
but  a  change  which  will  give  it  new  values 
and  make  it  a  finer  and  manlier  act  than  it 
was  before. 


THE  ESSENCE  OF  PRAYER         103 

In  the  first  place,  he  will  find  that  while 
his  prayer  horizon  has  become  wider,  the 
range  of  petition  has  somewhat  narrowed. 
If  God  rules  the  world  by  law,  and  to  grant 
some  prayers  would  mean  breaking  a  link 
in  the  chain  of  cause  and  effect  and  throw- 
ing the  universe  into  tmgoverned  disorder, 
then  he  will  not  expect  immediate  and  direct 
answer  to  prayer  where  the  laws  of  nature 
are  perfectly  plain.  Though,  of  course,  he 
will  remember  as  well  that  there  may  be 
laws  of  the  spiritual  realm,  as  yet  unper- 
ceived,  and  that  his  prayer  may  possibly  set 
in  motion  forces  which  counterbalance 
physical  forces,  just  as  by  mechanics  he  can 
overcome  the  law  of  gravitation.  Especially 
with  regard  to  prayer  in  time  of  sickness,  he 
will  remember  that  through  psychotherapy 
we  are  beginning  to  see  that  more  things  are 
wrought  by  prayer  than  this  world  dreams 
of.  At  least  he  will  see  that  he  has  much  to 
learn,  and  he  will  have  an  open  mind  instead 
of  a  doubting  spirit. 

Once  more,  he  will  learn  to  be  modest  in 
petition.  The  Lord's  Prayer  teaches  him 
that.  It  warns  him  to  ask  for  few  things 
for  self,  many  things  for  others  and  much 
for  the  increase  of  God's  honour  and  glory 
and    the    advancement    of    His    kingdom. 


104      THE  EXPEKIMENT  OF  FAITH 

Therefore  he  will  be  most  concerned  in 
bringing  to  God  the  world's  sorrow  and  the 
world's  sin  and  asking  His  help  in  restoring 
the  world  to  the  moral  harmony  and  ordered 
beauty  which  must  be  in  the  mind  of  the 
divine  Creator. 

Again,  he  will  discover  that  the  answer  to 
prayer  may  often  come  through  the  quick- 
ened mental  and  moral  life  of  the  one  who 
prays.  That  will  fit  in  with  his  original 
feeling  about  the  subjective  influence  of 
prayer.  God  answers  many  prayers  through 
human  agents  and  in  human  work.  The 
skill  and  understanding  of  the  physician,  the 
new  health  laws  which  medical  science  is 
constantly  discovering,  the  deeper  sympathy 
with  the  world's  pain  and  the  keen  desire  to 
help  which  at  length  must  so  lighten  the 
world's  burden — who  knows  what  part 
prayer  has  had  in  all  these?  The  new  sense 
of  corporate  responsibility,  with  its  educa- 
tion towards  a  better  industrial  order,  and 
the  new  spirit  of  social  service  which  has 
brought  light  into  so  many  dark  places  and 
made  human  life  so  much  less  unendur- 
able— who  can  say  what  prayer  has  done  in 
this  enlightenment?  There  is,  indeed,  "in- 
tercession which  is  cooperation  with  God," 
producing  as  a  late  fruit  of  Christianity  a 


THE  ESSENCE  OP  PEAYEE         105 

growth  of  the  social  spirit  which  makes  pos- 
sible the  rebirth  of  a  Christian  community 
and  the  releasing  of  its  activities  until  it  be- 
comes the  strongest  force  in  the  world. 

Finally,  he  will  learn  that  every  prayer 
must  be  made  with  a  reservation :  Thy  will 
be  done.  This  does  not  mean  simply  the 
spirit  of  submission,  although  that  is  a  part 
of  the  thought.  It  means  earnest  purpose 
to  work  for  the  things  which  God  wills.  It 
means  keenness  of  vision  to  perceive  and 
know  the  things  we  ought  to  do  and  per- 
sistent purpose  to  seek  grace  and  power  to 
do  them.  It  means  that  we  desire  spiritual 
insight  to  judge  our  work  and  make  our 
decisions  as  God  would  have  us.  It  means 
living  our  life  as  a  gift  from  Him.  Because 
this  ought  to  be  the  background  behind 
every  prayer,  to  pray  is  no  easy  work.  We 
have  to  take  time,  and  shut  the  world  out, 
and  learn  to  concentrate  the  mind  on  God, 
and  subdue  our  impatience  and  fill  ourselves 
with  the  spirit  of  obedience,  until  we  can 
think  temperately  and  accurately,  judge 
calmly  and  become  masters  of  ourselves  and 
loyal  servants  of  Him  whose  will  we  would 
accomplish. 

Let  the  man  who  wants  strong  faith  in 
prayer    try    to    pray    seriously.     His    own 


106      THE  EXPEKIMENT  OF  FAITH 

^. 

reasoning  shows  him  that  prayer,  to  amount 

to  anything,  must  mean  real  effort;  it  can- 
not be  casual  or  perfunctory.  Let  him  act 
on  what  his  reason  makes  so  clear — act  and 
act  and  act  again. 

So  the  seed  faith  of  the  questioner  has  in 
it  the  condensed  essentials  of  the  finest 
things  that  prayer  can  mean.  At  first  the 
larger  view  seems  to  rob  prayer  of  its  power 
by  destroying  belief  in  its  mechanical 
efficacy;  but  this  is  not  really  the  fact. 
What  we  have  lost  is  the  certainty  of  getting 
our  own  desire;  we  have  gained,  instead, 
the  knowledge  of  God's  will. 

He  asked  for  strength,  that  he  might  achieve; 
he  was  made  weak,  that  he  might  endure. 

He  asked  for  help,  that  he  might  do  larger 
things;  he  was  given  infirmity,  that  he  might  do 
better  things. 

He  asked  for  riches,  that  he  might  be  free  from 
care ;  he  was  given  poverty  that  he  might  be  wise 
rather  than  care-free. 

He  asked  for  power,  that  he  might  impress 
men ;  he  was  given  weakness,  that  he  might  seek 
God. 

He  asked  for  all  things,  that  he  might  enjoy 
life;  he  was  given  Life,  that  he  might  enjoy  all 
things. 

He  has  received  nothing  that  he  asked  for ;  he 
has  received  more  than  he  ever  hoped  for. 

His  prayer  is  answered — he  is  blest  indeed. 


X 

THE  UNVEILING  OF  DEITY 

IF  God  is  not  the  God  of  Christianity, 
He  ought  to  be ;  we  can  never,  now,  be 
content  with  any  other.  Men  in  gen- 
eral do  not  realize  how  little  they  know, 
apart  from  the  Christian  faith,  of  the  kind 
of  God  in  whom  they  can  believe.  Now 
and  then  some  daring  philosopher  attempts 
to  elaborate  a  new  idea  of  God,  only  to  suc- 
ceed, by  contrast,  in  revealing  the  perfection 
of  the  New  Testament  conception.  Even 
the  most  casual  study  of  comparative  re- 
ligion leads  to  a  similar  discovery.  The 
worlds  best  thoughts  of  God  are  found  in 
Christianity;  all  that  is  weak  or  unworthy 
has  been  eliminated  from  it.  In  God  the 
Father,  as  revealed  in  Jesus  Christ  His  Son, 
we  have  the  last  possible  word  in  religion. 
Generation  succeeds  generation  and  each 
finds  its  highest  ideal  realized  in  Chris- 
tianity, each  sees  in  it  new  spiritual  appre- 
ciations, but  none  has  ever  added  to  the 
actual  content  of  its  faith.  All  we  can  ever 
107 


108      THE  EXPEKIMENT  OP  FAITH 

ask  for,  it  has  had  all  the  while  to  give. 
Were  we  to  catalogue  all  the  qualities  we 
desire  in  God,  we  should  find  them  all  in  the 
God  of  Jesus — and  much  more  beside. 

But  is  Jesus  Christ's  idea  of  God  a  revela- 
tion— a  literal  unveiling  of  deity — or  is  it 
only  the  last  effort,  the  truest  and  best  con- 
ception, of  the  highest  and  best  of  men? 
Has  He  given  us  merely  a  splendid  "  inter- 
pretation" of  God,  or  has  He  really  drawn 
aside  the  curtain  of  the  sanctuary  so  that 
we  can  see  the  Father's  face? 

"  And  man  created  God  in  his  own  image, 
after  his  own  likeness ;  in  the  image  of  man 
created  he  God."  So  has  been  expressed 
the  thought  that  God  has  never  specially 
revealed  Himself,  that  our  idea  of  Him  is 
but  the  result  of  our  own  reasoning,  so  that 
"  the  best  God  is  the  God  of  the  best  men." 
Man  wants  a  divinity  and  therefore  works 
out  the  idea  of  divinity  for  himself.  The 
Kaiser's  idea  of  God  is  quite  different  from 
the  God  of  Phillips  Brooks,  for  example! 
The  Prussians  find  the  war  spirit  in  their 
own  hearts.  Then  they  set  it  up  in  the 
heavens  and  call  it  God.  So,  again,  the 
New  Testament  conception  of  God  is  a 
tremendous  advance  on  the  Old  Testament 
conception;  but  we  will  be  told  that  this  is 


THE  UNVEILING  OF  DEITY        109 

because  men's  moral  conceptions  had  won- 
derfully enlarged  during  the  centuries  from 
Moses  to  Christ.  With  man's  moral  growth 
comes  a  growing  appreciation  of  what  God 
should  be.  He  keeps  on  working,  enlarg- 
ing upon  his  ideals  of  deity  until  they  be- 
come reasonably  perfect  and  satisfying. 

Is,  then,  the  God  of  Jesus  a  real  revela- 
tion? 

It  helps  us  in  answering  the  question  if 
we  take  note  of  the  fact  which  gives  to 
Christianity  its  real  significance.  It  is  not 
simply  that  Jesus  Christ  has  given  us  the 
"  last  word  "  about  God.  The  marvel  does 
not  end  there.  The  perpetual  miracle  is 
this :  that  we  find  in  the  life  of  Jesus  the 
God  of  Jesus.  That  is  the  wonder  of  the 
Gospel  story.  We  cannot  separate  the 
divine  character  which  Christ  portrayed 
from  the  human  character  which  He  made 
so  attractive.  Our  ideas  of  God  as  they 
have  come  to  us  out  of  the  diffused  Chris- 
tianity which  colours  all  our  thinking  are 
inextricably  interwoven  with  our  knowledge 
of  what  Christ  was. 

To  put  it  in  a  very  simple  way:  were  we 
to  ask  any  man  to  think  long  and  carefully 
of  all  that  he  wants  God  to  be,  and  then 
describe  all  that  his  hungry  soul  longs  for, 


110      THE  EXPEKIMENT  OF  FAITH 

the  description  would  hardly  be  other  than 
a  picture  of  what  Jesus  Christ  was  in  His 
earthly  life — not  merely  a  picture  of  what 
He  tells  us  that  God  is,  but  a  picture  of  what 
He  Himself  was.  We  could  not  ask  for  a 
God  other  or  better  than  Jesus  Himself. 
We  cannot  think  of  any  attribute  of  deity 
of  which  we  have  not  the  human  counterpart 
in  His  life.     He  was  all  that  He  taught. 

Then  there  is  this  further  fact:  Jesus 
claimed  to  be  of  divine  origin.  If  His  claim 
be  true,  then  all  that  He  asserted  of  God  we 
know  to  be  fact;  for  we  know  what  God  is 
in  knowing  what  Christ  is.  If  His  claim  of 
divinity  be  disallowed,  or  explained  away, 
then  we  are  once  more  in  the  dark.  We 
have  had  a  wonderfully  beautiful  conception 
of  God  as  the  thought  of  the  Best  of  men; 
but — He  may  have  been  mistaken.  He  rose 
to  the  heights  of  human  aspiration ;  but  He 
could  not  have  been  sure,  any  more  than  we 
are  sure. 

So  we  come  to  the  man  who  does  not 
know  what  to  believe  about  Jesus. 

"  What  think  you  of  Christ?  "  we  ask,  and 
he  cannot  tell.  "  I  am  not  quite  sure  what 
I  believe.  Indeed,  I  have  not  troubled  over- 
much, it  may  be,  to  find  out;  because  to  me 


THE  UNVEILING  OF  DEITY        111 

the  essential  thing  is  my  belief  in  Christ,  not 
my  belief  about  Him.  I  cannot  honestly 
answer  your  question  in  words  of  no  un- 
certain sound.  I  only  know  what  the  life 
of  Jesus  stands  for.  I  admire  and  revere 
its  supreme  beauty.  I  appreciate  to  the  full 
the  splendour  of  His  teaching.  I  bow  in 
adoration  before  Him ;  I  worship  the  Father 
of  whom  He  taught.  But  beyond  this  I 
cannot  go — I  simply  do  not  know.  Is  it  not 
enough  to  follow  Christ,  without  troubling 
ourselves  to  understand  Him?" 

There  is  something  so  fine  about  such  an 
answer  that  it  warms  the  heart  of  the  be- 
liever. And  yet — and  yet — the  question  is 
the  question  of  our  Lord  Himself:  "What 
think  ye  of  Christ?  "  Its  importance,  we 
have  just  said,  lies  in  the  fact  that  only 
through  our  right  answer  to  it  can  we  be 
sure  of  the  God  of  Jesus.  If  Christ  were 
only  a  good  man,  then  we  should  have  but 
one  more  instance  of  such  a  man,  serving 
faithfully  and  deserted  at  the  last.  But  if 
He  is  the  Son  of  God,  then  we  have  light  on 
life's  dark  mystery.  What  we  want  is  to 
know  of  a  surety  whether  God  is  the  God  of 
love  we  have  been  told  He  is — oh,  how  we 
do  want  to  know  that  in  these  days  that 
try  men's  souls !     If  Jesus  is  divine,  then  we 


112      THE  EXPEEIMENT  OF  FAITH 

can  be  certain.  He  is  the  assurance  that 
God  Himself  has  entered  into  the  tragedy 
of  human  life,  that  He  has  experienced  our 
sorrow. and  suffering  and  that  He  sympa- 
thizes. What  Christ  was,  God  is.  What 
Christ  said,  God  says.  What  Christ  did, 
God  does.  What  Christ  felt,  God  feels. 
Does  God  love?  He  gave  His  only  begotten 
Son. 

Having  said  that,  we  ask  our  friend  to 
start  as  before  on  the  path  towards  faith. 
Our  appeal  to  the  man  who  reveres  the 
beauty  of  Christ's  life  is  again  the  same: 
Live  true  to  your  truth.  You  accept  Christ 
as  the  embodiment  of  humanity's  ideal; 
very  well,  then,  try  to  be  all  that  you  admire. 
Of  course  I  know  you  are  conscientious  and 
sincere — this  is  no  questioning  of  your 
moral  character.  You  more  than  meet  the 
standards  of  ordinary  present  day  religion. 
Your  life  is  highly  respectable  and  eminently 
useful;  it  fulfills  all  the  ethical  requirements 
of  your  class.  But  you  know,  do  you  not, 
that  you  have  not  actually  and  literally 
taken  Christ  as  your  model.  You  know 
you  have  not  been  striving,  with  serious 
and  steadfast  purpose,  to  embody  His  every 
ideal  in  your  daily  life.  You  know  that  you 
have  been   satisfied  with   standards  lower 


THE  UNVEILING  OF  DEITY        113 

than  His.  Your  circumstances  are  different, 
of  course,  but  you  know  that  you  have  not 
steadily  sought  to  translate  Him  into  terms 
of  to-day.  You  know  that  you  have  never 
fully  and  frankly  faced  the  task  of  applying 
to  the  very  different  conditions  of  your  life 
the  principles  which  guided  Him  in  the  life 
of  Palestine  two  thousand  years  ago.  You 
know,  indeed,  that  you  have  hardly  more 
than  surface  impressions  of  His  teaching; 
you  have  never  dug  down  deep  to  discover 
the  principles  of  conduct  which  ruled  His 
life  and  should  rule  ours. 

Suppose  you  try  it.  Begin  to  live  with 
Christ,  to  live  with  Him  long  and  closely. 
Just  go  on,  quietly  measuring  your  life 
against  His.  Try  to  live  exactly  as  Christ 
would  were  He  in  your  position;  do  exactly 
what  He  would  do;  say  only  the  things  He 
would  say ;  banish  every  thought  that  could 
not  by  any  possibility  find  place  in  His 
mind;  put  aside  every  ambition  and  give  up 
every  plan  and  every  cherished  desire  that 
you  could  not  imagine  His  considering 
worth  your  chief  effort.  You  have  had  the 
vision  of  goodness — try  to  follow  it  faith- 
fully, exactly  and  persistently. 

Ah !  if  we  tried  to  do  that,  how  soon  our 
doubts  would  dissolve  and  our  difficulties 


114       THE  EXPEKIMENT  OP  FAITH 

vanish  and  the  truth  be  made  plain.  Be- 
cause we  ourselves  had  made  an  honest 
effort  towards  a  lofty  ideal,  had  tried  and 
failed,  we  should  begin  to  understand  the 
significance  of  the  Gospel  story.  The  days 
of  Christ's  life  on  earth,  we  should  see,  were 
days  of  tremendous  import — a  time  when 
the  spiritual,  the  supernatural,  the  divine 
manifested  itself  in  an  undeniable  way.  It 
would  become  our  conviction,  as  it  has  been 
the  conviction  of  the  ages,  that  Jesus  Christ 
cannot  be  explained  in  human  terms  alone. 
He  is  something  more  than  the  highest 
product  of  the  human  race.  We  set  His 
life  over  against  our  lives,  and  it  seems 
natural  to  apply  to  Him  the  words  of  the 
ancient  prophecy,  "  My  thoughts  are  not 
your  thoughts,  neither  are  my  ways  your 
ways,  saith  the  Lord.  For  as  the  heavens 
are  higher  than  the  earth,  so  are  my  ways 
higher  than  your  ways  and  my  thoughts 
than  your  thoughts." 

Back  in  the  minds  of  many  who  cannot 
accept  the  fuller  faith  in  Christ  is  the  feel- 
ing that  if  we  admit  that  He  is  God  we  are 
taking  away  what  is  most  precious  in  His 
life,  His  "real,  genuine,  flesh -and -blood 
humanity,"  and  are  substituting  a  majestic 


THE  UNVEILING  OF  DEITY        115 

and  unapproachable  figure  for  the  human; 
toiling,  loving  Man  we  revere.  If  it  were 
true  that  orthodox  theology  robs  us  of  a 
Christ  who  is  wholly  and  genuinely  one 
with  ourselves,  men  would  be  quite  right 
in  their  insistence  on  a  restatement  of  the 
Church's  teaching;  but  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
it  was  the  constant  effort  of  Christian 
thinkers  to  safeguard  the  true  and  full 
humanity  of  Christ  while  proclaiming  also 
His  real  divinity.  The  Chalcedonian  de- 
crees, for  one  who  will  take  the  trouble  to 
study  them,  prove  this.  The  Christ  of  the 
creed  is  the  human  Christ  who  emptied 
Himself  and  restrained  His  divine  powers 
and  lived  His  life  in  human  strength  alone, 
subject  to  human  weakness  while  perfectly 
responsive  to  divine  grace.  Only  so  much 
of  His  Godhead  appears  through  the 
humanity  as  is  consistent  with  a  natural 
human  development.  He  never  called  upon 
His  divine  resources  and  powers,  He  never 
summoned  His  divine  wisdom  and  strength ; 
He  was  what  He  was  as  man,  with  man's 
powers,  through  man's  prayers,  in  man's 
communion  with  God.  Sanday  suggests 
that  the  divine  in  Him  was  like  the  sub- 
conscious in  us;  that  is,  not  to  press  the 
analogy  too  far,  only  so  much  of  it  came  to 


116      THE  EXPEKIMENT  OF  FAITH 

the  surface  as  could  be  expressed  in  a  truly 
human  life.  His  humanity  was  not  an  un- 
real thing,  as  if  He  were  merely  acting  or 
playing  a  part. 

Nor  must  we  forget  that  humanity  itself 
has  sparks  of  the  divine.  "  The  only  idea 
we  can  form  of  a  God  whom  we  should  de- 
sire to  worship,"  says  one  of  the  authors  of 
Faith  or  Fear,  "  is  one  who  exhibits,  while 
He  transcends,  the  characteristics  of  the 
best  men  and  women  we  know.  He  must 
be  a  Person  who  manifests  the  love  and 
courage,  the  strength  and  beauty,  the 
patience  and  self-sacrifice,  the  justice  and 
wisdom,  which  we  find  scattered  in  little 
patches  here  and  there  in  the  lives  of  some 
whom  we  have  met.  It  is  because  Christ 
did  so  completely  embody  the  essentials  of 
the  perfect  life,  which  are  seen  and  known 
to  us  in  glimpses  here  and  there  in  human 
history,  that  we  can  say  that  the  character 
which  we  believe  to  be  divine  has  actually 
been  manifested  in  the  world." 

Only  as  we  understand  what  humanity 
was  meant  to  be  can  the  idea  of  Incarnation 
be  possible.  There  is  something  essentially 
so  splendid  about  our  human  nature  that 
God  can  really  enter  into  that  nature  with- 
out ceasing  to  be  God.     So  clearly  was  this 


THE  UNVEILING  OF  DEITY        117 

seen  by  some  of  the  early  Christian  fathers 
that  they  regarded  the  Incarnation  as 
inevitable  and  appropriate  even  apart  from 
its  redemptive  purpose.  It  was  "  God's 
natural  and  eternal  and  inevitable  destiny 
to  manifest  Himself  as  man." 

To  give  full  force  to  such  thoughts  as 
these  is  not  to  empty  the  Incarnation  of  all 
meaning  through  the  assertion  that  Jesus 
Christ  is  divine  as  we  all  are,  only  "  more 
so."  It  is  simply  to  recognize  the  natural 
kinship  of  the  human  and  the  divine  through 
an  appreciation  of  all  that  is  finest  and  best 
in  humanity;  to  see,  therefore,  the  possibil- 
ity of  its  use  in  the  self-revelation  of  deity. 
It  is  to  think  of  God  in  terms  of  humanity 
carried  to  infinite  perfection.  It  is  to  see 
how  the  varied  rays  of  human  goodness 
meet  in  Christ  in  the  absolute  unity  of  per- 
fect light.  It  is  to  see  that  a  character 
manifesting  all  that  is  fine  and  high  and  true 
and  noble  in  all  the  best  men  of  all  the  ages, 
and  manifesting  it  in  such  surpassing 
measure,  is  a  Character  which  can  be  defined 
only  in  terms  commensurate  with  divine 
perfection.  It  is  to  think  of  God  in  Christ 
not  in  terms  of  immensity  and  almightiness, 
but  of  identity  of  spiritual  qualities — that  is, 
identity    of    spiritual    Life.     We    are    dis- 


IIS      TEE  EXPERIMENT  OF  FAITff 

eouraged  in  our  thoughts  of  God  if  we  fix 
our  minds  chiefly  on  the  greatness  of  the 
Universal  Mind.  To  think  of  God  in  Christ 
is  to  bring  Him  near,  to  remove  the  abstract- 
.ness  and  loftiness  which  keep  the  soul  from 
warm  and  living  contact  with  Him.  It  is  to 
remember  that  He  is  not  far  removed  from 
the  world  or  wholly  unlike  men. 

This  makes  the  Incarnation,  as  Donald 
Hankey  puts  it,  agreeable  to  common  sense. 
"  We  cannot  understand  or  perceive  the 
spiritual  unless  we  can  establish  contact 
with  it  through  the  medium  of  our  physical 
senses.  Just  as  we  see  electricity  revealed 
in  its  effects  on  matter,  though  the  stuff 
itself  eludes  our  senses,  so  we  can  under- 
stand and  perceive  the  divine  Spirit  in  so  far 
as  He  is  revealed  in  His  effects  on  physical 
beings/'  The  Incarnation  is  such  a  revela- 
tion through  a  perfect  medium.  It  is  the 
self-identification  of  God  with  humanity,  so 
that  in  Christ  God  is  laying  bare  His  heart 
for  all  to  see. 

All  this  we  are  on  the  way  to  realize  the 
moment  we  begin  literally  to  live  true  to 
the  truth  we  know  about  Jesus.  Christ 
never  came  among  men,  saying,  "  I  am  God; 
you  must  accept  it  and  believe. "  He  would 
have  us  know  by   experience  rather  than 


THE  UNVEILING  OF  DEITY        119 

prove  by  argument.  So  it  was  that  the 
first  disciples  came  to  know  Him.  They  did 
not  reason  from  the  divinity  downward,  but 
from  the  humanity  upward.  They  believed 
in  the  divinity  through  their  experience  of 
the  perfect  humanity  and  so  believing  they 
handed  on  their  faith  as  an  inheritance 
which  the  perpetual  experience  of  the 
power  of  Christ  in  those  who  really  be- 
lieve has  made  continually  more  credible. 
Unique  in  character,  they  came  to  under- 
stand that  their  Master  was  unique  in  nature 
also. 

This  method  of  approach  may  help  us  in 
some  of  the  special  difficulties  of  the  present 
day.  Take,  for  example,  the  question  of 
the  Virgin  Birth.  We  have  seen,  as  we 
took  our  road  towards  faith,  that  belief  in 
the  divinity  of  Christ  is  in  no  way  dependent 
on  belief  in  His  miraculous  birth.  We  learn 
that  Jesus  is  the  Son  of  God  exactly  as  the 
first  disciples  discovered  it,  by  living  with 
Him  long  enough  and  closely  enough  to  see 
that  the  real  miracle  is  the  continuous 
miracle  of  His  life.  Nothing  could  be  more 
wonder-compelling  than  that.  It  is  at  once 
our  shame  and  our  inspiration.  It  is  so 
.absolutely  unique  that  the  only  worthy  ex- 


120      THE  EXPERIMENT  OF  FAITH 

planation  of  it  is  found  in  the  creed :  "  I  be- 
lieve in  one  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  the  only- 
begotten  Son  of  God  .  .  .  Who  for  us 
men  and  for  our  salvation  came  down  from 
heaven." 

But  if  Jesus  Christ  is  divine,  if  at  His 
birth  an  Eternal  and  Divine  Personality 
entered  into  a  new  mode  of  existence,  and 
manifested  Himself  in  human  form,  then  it 
would  hardly  be  strange  or  unreasonable 
if  His  birth  were  unlike  other  births.  The 
fact  of  Jesus  Himself  is  so  unique  and 
miraculous  that  we  may  rightly  expect  the 
method  of  His  entrance  into  the  earthly  life 
to  be  unique  and  miraculous  also.  Face  to 
face  with  a  life  that  cannot  be  explained  save 
as  the  unveiling  of  deity,  we  ask  how  it 
would  be  possible  for  an  Eternal,  Divine 
Personality  to  clothe  Himself  in  human  flesh 
after  the  ordinary  mode  of  human  concep- 
tion. When  a  child  is  born  of  human 
parents,  a  new  personality  enters  upon  its 
life.  When  Jesus  Christ  was  born,  it  was 
no  new  personality  that  appeared,  but  He 
who  is  from  Everlasting. 

We  must  start  at  the  right  point.  As- 
suming that  Christ  is  God  (and  we  have 
barely  touched  the  fringe  of  the  argument 
for  that  fact),  here  is  something  which  has 


THE  UNVEILING  OF  DEITY        121 

no  equal  or  likeness  in  the  annals  of  earth. 
It  is  not  the  case  of  a  new  man  coming  into 
life,  but  of  the  Creator  of  all  things  mani- 
festing Himself  in  a  particular  life.  "  If  a 
divine  life  was  entering  into  our  weakened 
humanity,"  said  a  former  Dean  of  West- 
minster in  Some  Thoughts  on  the  Incarnation, 
"  can  we  think  it  inappropriate  that  from 
the  outset  this  life  should  manifest  its 
power  to  transcend  the  natural  order  by 
which  we  are  limited?  If  miracle  is  ever 
in  place  as  a  witness  to  the  intervention  of 
a  new  power,  challenging  our  attention  and 
manifesting  the  '  finger  of  God/  was  not  the 
coming  of  the  Son  of  God  in  human  flesh  a 
fit  occasion  for  miracle  ?" 

Once  we  separate  in  thought  the  fact  of 
the  Incarnation  from  the  mode  of  its  accom- 
plishment, we  have  stated  the  two  truths  in 
the  right  order  and  can  approach  them  with 
a  due  sense  of  their  right  proportion.  Then 
we  are  not  making  the  mistake  of  resting 
our  belief  in  Christ's  divine  life  on  the  frail 
foundation  of  an  acceptance  of  the  Gospel 
accounts  of  His  birth.  On  the  contrary,  we 
are  ready  to  adopt  a  less  antagonistic  atti- 
tude in  our  consideration  of  the  evidence  of 
the  miracle  of  the  birth,  because  it  is  sec- 
ondary to  the  greater  miracle  of  the  Life, 


122      THE  EXPEKIMENT  OF  FAITH 

secondary  to  it,  but  singularly  consistent 
with  it. 

Then,  too,  we  see  the  importance  of  the 
emphasis  the  creeds  have  always  placed  on 
the  Virgin  Birth.  It  safeguards  both  the 
truths  we  have  been  considering.  The  fact 
of  the  birth  guarantees  the  actual  humanity 
of  Christ  as  against  the  tendency  to  make 
it  humanly  unreal;  the  uniqueness  of  the 
birth  is  the  guarantee  that  the  One  born  is 
unique  in  His  Personality — the  very  Son 
of  God. 

And  the  fact  of  this  unique  Personality 
baffles  any  other  explanation  than  that  of 
the  creed.  Does  that  explanation  seem  too 
great  to  be  true?  In  fact,  it  is  too  fine  and 
splendid  not  to  be  true.  "  The  very  God ! 
think,  Ahib " — so  Browning  makes  Kar- 
shish  the  Arab  physician  write  to  his 
friend— "  think,  Ahib;  then  the  All-Great 
were  the  All-Loving  too." 


XI 

THE  FACT  OF  IMMORTALITY 

EVERY  preacher  who  has  given  care- 
ful thought  to  the  preparation  of 
an  Easter  sermon  knows  that  his 
words  are  but  an  echo  of  the  hopes  and 
longings  of  his  congregation.  The  value 
of  the  sermon  lies  in  this,  that  it  is  the 
assurance  of  things  hoped  for.  It  is  like 
an  obligato  which  repeats  and  lifts  higher 
the  chorus  of  their  own  hearts*  song. 
There  is,  in  all  men,  a  deep  and  passionate 
yearning  for  a  life  beyond  this  life  of  which 
the  creed  of  the  Christian  is  the  positive 
satisfaction  and  assurance. 

It  is  from  this  ground  of  common  hope 
and  faith  that  we  must  begin  any  discussion 
of  the  resurrection.  We  start,  therefore, 
with  the  simplest  possible  belief  in  a  future 
life.  When  we  declare  our  faith  in  "  the 
resurrection  of  the  body  and  the  life  ever- 
lasting "  we  mean — if,  for  a  moment,  we 
may  brush  aside  all  technicalities — simply 
what  we  commonly  call  immortality;  we 
J  23 


124      THE  EXPERIMENT  OF  FAITH 

mean  the  conviction  that,  after  death  here, 
personality  survives  in  another  life  beyond. 

The  power  of  the  apostles'  preaching  lay 
in  their  assertion  of  positive  knowledge  of 
facts  which  gave  assurance  of  this  common 
hope.  Their  faith  was  grounded  in  the 
absolute  certainty  that  their  crucified  Mas- 
ter was  still  alive.  If  there  is  anything  on 
earth  beyond  controversy  it  is  that  the 
disciples  of  the  Lord  believed  with  all  their 
hearts  that  Jesus  Christ  had  risen.  They 
were  as  sure  of  it  as  they  were  of  their  own 
existence.  And  they  were  just  as  sure  that 
His  resurrection  was  a  pledge  of  their  own. 
Therein  lay  the  wonder  of  their  message. 
The  empty  tomb  opened  the  grave  and  gate 
of  death  for  all.  It  satisfied  the  one  great 
hunger  of  the  human  heart — the  desire  to 
know  of  a  surety  whether  there  is  another 
life  and  whether  those  we  have  loved  long 
since  and  lost  are  lost  only  for  a  while.  We 
want  to  be  sure  that  love  shall  never  end. 

Ah !  how  men  had  hungered  to  have  this 
longing  of  their  heart  satisfied;  how  they 
had  reasoned,  and  weighed  probabilities, 
and  wrung  hints  from  nature,  and  forced 
hopes  into  opinions,  and  tried  to  turn 
opinions  into  convictions — and  yet  had 
never  really  known. 


THE  FACT  OP  IMMOETALITY      125 

Always  there  had  been  the  hope.  It  is 
the  all-but-universal  instinct  of  the  race  and 
it  has  real  ground  of  reasonable  conviction. 
The  form  of  matter  changes,  but  the  essen- 
tial substance  of  the  universe  neither  in- 
creases nor  diminishes.  Surely  senseless 
atoms  shall  not  endure  and  conscious  spirits 
perish.  Life  is  always  passing  on,  through 
the  death  of  old  forms,  to  continued  and 
fuller  life.  It  cannot  be  different  with  the 
human  life.  In  man  the  Creator  has  per- 
sonal and  intelligent  connection  with  the 
world  and  it  is  inconceivable  that  He  could 
be  "perpetually  destroying  this  sensitive 
bond  by  the  perpetual  destruction  of  the 
souls  through  which  the  bond  was  estab- 
lished." 

It  must  be  so — Plato,  thou  reasonest  well — 
Else  whence  this  pleasing  hope,  this  fond 

desire, 
This  longing  after  immortality? 

This  hope  was  made  certain  by  Christ. 
He  did  not  argue  about  it — argument  is  a 
terrible  trifling  to  human  hearts  sick  with 
their  loss.  He  did  not  explain  difficulties — 
how  could  they  be  explained  when  there  is 
no  language  of  human  experience  in  which 
to  phrase  the  explanation?  He  did  not  give 
details — when  all  is  said,  of  what  importance 


126      THE~EXP:EBIMENT  'OF  FAITH 

are  these  by  comparison  with  the  great  fact 
itself?  He  simply  took  for  granted  that 
death  is  a  mere  turn  in  the  road  to  life 
eternal,  because  God  being  what  He  is,  and 
man  being  God's  child,  it  could  not  be  other- 
wise. He  filled  men's  hearts  with  trust  in 
a  heavenly  Father.  He  made  them  under- 
stand the  real  value  of  human  life. 

His  teaching,  therefore,  fits  with  singular 
ease  and  aptness  into  our  modern  ways  of 
thinking.  With  us  any  belief  in  immortality 
must  rest  back  upon  God's  moral  character. 
Once  we  accept  that,  life  beyond  life  is 
undeniable. 

For  the  man  who  would  have  his  hope 
pass  into  certainty,  there  is  no  surer  path  to 
faith  than  that  which  starts  from  the  full 
recognition  of  this  teaching  of  Jesus.  It  is 
not  proof,  of  course ;  it  is  the  foundation  for 
faith.  Indeed,  the  best  things  of  life  are 
felt  rather  than  proved,  and  this  best  of  all 
things  is  no  exception  to  the  rule.  Against 
the  background  of  Christ's  teaching,  how- 
ever, the  argument  is  thrown  into  sharper 
relief,  and  we  see  more  clearly  the  force  of 
all  our  reasoning. 

The  resurrection  of  Jesus  made  assurance 
doubly  sure.     All   that  He   taught  of  im- 


THE  FACT  OF  IMMOBTALITY      127 

mortality  was  confirmed  when  He  Himself 
was  shown  to  be  alive.  Death  did  not  end 
all  for  Him;  He  did  live  beyond  the  grave. 
We,  too,  therefore,  are  immortal;  for  us 
also  there  is  another  life.  It  was  this  that 
the  apostles  proclaimed  with  triumphant 
boldness.  Their  words  rang  as  a  challenge, 
clear,  sharp,  direct,  decisive. 

St.  Paul,  after  a  concentrated  experience 
which  crowded  into  a  short  space  all  that 
the  apostles  had  passed  through  in  the  last 
days  of  Christ's  earthly  life  and  especially 
in  the  dark  hours  between  Good  Friday  and 
Easter,  staked  all  on  the  truth  of  the  resur- 
rection. "  If  Christ  be  not  raised  your 
faith  is  vain."  "  If  in  this  life  only  we  have 
hope  in  Christ,  we  are  of  all  men  most 
miserable."  He  would  have  no  compromise, 
no  half-way  assurance,  no  ecstatic  but  empty 
rapture.  A  risen  and  triumphant  Christ 
was  the  pledge  of  a  risen  and  triumphant 
humanity,  and  because  he  was  so  certain  of 
both  he  ventured  everything  and  risked 
what  men  ordinarily  count  most  precious 
for  the  hope  of  the  eternal. 

Neither  he  nor  the  apostles  were  the  vic- 
tims of  an  hysterical  enthusiasm.  The  nar- 
rative shows  us  a  group  of  men  who  had 
followed  Christ  faithfully  though  falteringly, 


128      THE  EXPEKIMENT  OF  FAITH 

who  at  first  understood  Him  very  dimly, 
who  were  dazed  and  stunned  by  His  death, 
who  hid  behind  closed  doors,  with  shaken 
hearts,  in  trembling  expectancy,  fearing  lest 
their  turn  should  come  next,  who  were  in 
utter  despair  at  the  shattering  of  all  their 
hopes  and  full  of  painful  penitence  at  their 
own  cowardice  in  the  crisis  that  removed 
their  Master. 

The  story  of  the  change  which  came  over 
this  panic-stricken  company  has  been  re- 
hearsed so  often  that  it  may  be  condensed 
into  a  paragraph.  The  brief  telling  of  it 
is  a  concentrated  proof  of  the  resurrection. 
Men  weak,  cowardly  and  despairing  sud- 
denly became  strong,  confident,  bold  and 
unafraid.  Neither  bonds  nor  imprisonment 
could  make  them  waver  in  their  testimony. 
They  rejoiced  that  they  were  counted 
worthy  to  suffer  for  the  truth.  Their  wit- 
ness compelled  belief,  and  in  their  new 
strength  they  established  a  Church  and  con- 
verted the  world.  In  the  Church  the  core 
of  faith  was  belief  in  the  risen  Lord.  The 
very  sacrament  of  admission  was  a  symbolic 
burial  with  Christ,  that  the  disciple  might 
rise  with  Him  into  newness  of  life.  The 
chief  act  of  worship  was  a  memorial  of  His 
death  which  would  have  been  pointless  and 


THE  FACT  OF  IMMOETALITY      129 

inane  did  it  not  imply  participation  in  His 
risen  life  and  sharing  in  the  triumph  of  His 
victory.  Finally,  the  day  which  became 
fixed  as  the  special  Christian  day  of  devotion 
was  in  itself  a  weekly  proclamation  of  faith 
in  Him  as  conqueror  of  death. 

These  things  cannot  be  explained  save  on 
the  ground  that  the  new  life  of  the  new 
society  was  rooted  in  reality.  No  ghost 
story  spiritualized  into  a  gospel  of  the 
resurrection  can  adequately  account  for  the 
upspringing  of  Christendom. 

It  is  enough  if  we  rest  here  on  this  simple 
statement  of  fact.  Half  the  doubts  of  men 
begin  beyond  this  point.  A  whole  range  of 
questions  arise  as  to  the  relation  between 
the  natural  and  the  spiritual  body  of  the 
Lord,  the  body  which  hung  on  the  cross  and 
the  body  which  appeared  to  the  disciples  be- 
hind the  closed  doors  of  the  upper  chamber. 
It  is  inevitable,  of  course,  that  there  should 
be  further  enquiry  and  speculation;  only  we 
must  remember  that  it  is  speculation.  I 
may  hold  one  hypothesis;  you  may  hold 
another;  both  are  only  theories.  The  one 
essential  thing  is  that  no  hypothesis  shall 
forget  the  fact  of  the  empty  tomb.  Jesus 
was  crucified,  dead  and  buried.     He  died 


130      THE  EXPEKIMENT  OF  FAITH 

after  a  public  execution,  was  buried  in  a 
well-known  grave,  His  disciples  asserted 
positively  that  He  had  risen,  and,  had  not 
the  tomb  been  empty,  it  would  have  been 
the  simplest  thing  in  the  world  to  produce 
the  body  and  dissipate  the  faith  of  His  fol- 
lowers. One  glance  at  it  would  have 
pricked  like  a  bubble  the  emotional  frenzy 
of  the  apostles.  It  is  not  enough,  therefore, 
to  declare  our  faith  in  the  resurrection  by 
stating  our  acceptance  of  the  fact  that 
Jesus  survived  death,  as  we  all  hope  to  do. 
Whatever  it  was,  an  actual  bodily  resurrec- 
tion occurred. 

When  we  come  to  explanations  of  what 
it  was,  there  is  nothing  we  can  say  and  it 
seems  hopeless  to  pursue  the  enquiry.  The 
question  was  one  which  did  not  present 
itself  to  the  minds  of  the 'evangelists.  As 
Professor  Drown  reminds  us,  their  problem 
was  different  from  ours.  "  They  expected 
the  speedy  return  of  the  Lord  and  the  com- 
ing of  the  Messianic  kingdom,  which  was  to 
bring  in  a  new  world  order  that  was  to  be 
eternal.  Therefore  no  sharp  distinction 
was  in  mind  between  the  forms  of  existence 
of  this  life  and  those  of  the  life  to  come. 
We  are  to-day  in  a  different  position.  We 
can  no  longer  think  of  this  earth  as  destined 


THE  FACT  OF  IMMOETALITY      131 

to  last  forever,  and  we  can  no  longer  think 
of  the  life  beyond  in  such  clear  and  definite 
form  as  when  the  world  to  come  was  con- 
ceived of  as  so  close  at  hand.  We  can  no 
longer  conceive  of  our  own  resurrection  in 
forms  that  belong  directly  to  this  life.  We 
cannot  think  of  the  body  that  is  sown  as 
identical  with  the  body  that  shall  be. 
Rather  we  believe  that  God  will  give  us  a 
body  as  shall  please  Him,  in  such  a  form 
of  existence  as  we  do  not  know,  but  which 
will  become  clear  to  us  when  we  no  longer 
see  through  a  glass  darkly,  but  face  to  face." 

Why  should  not  faith  rest  on  the  primary 
conviction  and  be  content  without  light  on 
all  questions  that  are  secondary  and  sub- 
sidiary? Enough  for  us  that  in  the  other 
life  we  shall  have  some  sort  of  an  instrument 
through  which  the  soul  can  express  itself — 
for  that  is  the  real  purpose  of  a  body,  is  it 
not?  We  shall  need,  therefore,  not  a 
natural  body,  but  a  spiritual  body  fitted  for 
a  spiritual  world. 

An  illustration — a  favourite  one  with  the 
late  Dr.  Shipman — may  help.  You  watch 
a  waterspout.  There  is  an  eddy,  a  spin  of 
wind  that  passes  over  the  sea.  As  it  sweeps 
along  it  catches  up  water  and  whirls  it  like 
a  pillar  towards  the  sky.     There  it  stands — 


132      THE  EXPERIMENT  OF  FAITH 

an  opaque  column,  like  the  trunk  of  a  huge 
palm  tree,  between  the  ocean  and  the  clouds. 
It  passes  on  till  it  reaches  the  land.  Then 
there  is  no  more  supply  of  water  to  feed  it 
and  at  once  it  discharges  itself  in  a  torrent 
of  rain  and  dies  away  to  the  eye.  Is  it  gone 
altogether?  No,  it  moves  on;  but  it  is  in- 
visible. Then  the  windy  spiral  sweeps 
further  inland  and  by  and  by  crosses  a  sandy 
desert.  At  once  it  draws  in  the  light  par- 
ticles and  is  again  visible,  now  as  a  red 
brown  pillar  stalking  over  the  dusty  waste. 
Then  it  travels  beyond  the  verge  of  the 
desert  and  vanishes  again. 

So  with  ourselves.  Our  bodily  life  here 
is  but  the  catching  up  of  elements,  the 
assimilating  and  sifting  out  of  the  earthly 
atoms  which  give  us  a  visible  existence. 
When  all  that  is  left  of  the  body  is  a  little 
heap  of  dust  in  the  cemetery,  are  we  no 
more?  Certainly  not.  The  spiritual  body 
lives,  though  it  passes  over  the  realm  of 
immaterialism.  As  the  whirlwind  takes  up 
now  sand  and  now  water,  and  again  is  felt 
only  in  the  spin  of  the  invisible  air,  so  the 
soul  passes  into  the  purely  spiritual  realm 
and  yet  finds  that  which  enables  it  to  ex- 
press itself  and  make  its  presence  known. 

According  to  the   Gospel  accounts,   the 


THE  FACT  OF  IMMOETALITY      133 

risen  body  of  Christ  was  similar  to  the  body 
the  disciples  had  seen  before  the  crucifixion, 
and  yet  dissimilar.  All  the  former  sub- 
stance was  present,  but  in  another  form; 
just  as  water,  if  we  may  be  allowed  another 
rather  crude  illustration,  may  exist  in  the 
form  of  vapour. 

The  disciples  were  untroubled  about  all 
such  problems,  not  only  because  their  situa- 
tion was  so  different  from  ours,  but  because 
they  had  such  confident  conviction  of  the 
fact  of  the  resurrection  that  subsidiary  ques- 
tions had  no  place  in  their  thought.  If  we 
could  see  the  risen  Christ  to-day,  as  they 
saw  Him,  there  would  be  for  us  such  joy  in 
believing  that  all  problems  of  the  "  how"  of 
the  glorious  fact  would  vanish  in  the  glad- 
ness of  the  fact  itself. 

Shall  we  not  gain  our  assurance,  then,  by 
concentrating  on  the  simple  fact  of  immor- 
tality? Is  it  not  enough  to  begin  on?  That 
brings  us  back  to  our  first  text,  that  the  way 
of  faith  is  fidelity  to  truth.  Just  as  the 
background  of  Christ's  resurrection  is 
found  in  His  view  of  God  and  human  life, 
so  the  root  and  spring  of  our  faith  must  be 
sought  in  a  ready  willingness  to  live  true 
to  all  that  belief  in  immortality  implies. 


134      THE  EXPEKIMENT  OF  FAITH 

Are  we  doing  that?  We  accept  the  bare 
fact  of  immortality.  Our  hope  is  that  we 
shall  survive  death.  We  are  reasonably 
sure  that  life  goes  on  and  on,  beyond  the 
grave.  Are  we  acting  as  we  should  expect 
men  to  act  who  believe  that,  even  with 
feeble  and  faltering  faith? 

Here,  then,  is  the  remedy  for  doubt. 
Practice  the  fact  of  immortality.  Ask  how 
any  one  should  live  who  honestly  felt  that 
death  is  not  the  end  of  all  things.  We  shall 
never  have  certainty  of  conviction  save  as 
we  try  to  make  our  life  story  answer  St. 
Paul's  challenge :  "  If  in  this  life  only  we 
have  hope  in  Christ,  we  are  of  all  men  most 
miserable."  The  early  Christian  believers 
staked  all  on  the  truth  of  their  conviction. 
If  by  any  chance  they  had  proved  mistaken, 
they  were  as  fools  and  blind ;  they  had  given 
up  all  that  men  prize  here  in  hope  of  greater 
treasures  hereafter,  and  after  losing  all  were 
only  foolish  visionaries  robbed  of  their 
reward. 

Have  we  made  any  such  sacrifice?  As 
plain  matter  of  fact,  are  we  acting  as  if  we 
believed  in  a  future  life?  Newman  has  a 
sermon  on  The  Ventures  of  Faith  which  will 
always  live  in  the  hearts  of  those  who  have 
read    it.     If    by    any    chance    Christianity 


THE  FACT  OP  IMMOETALITY      135 

should  prove  a  false  hope,  its  promises  of 
life  an  iridescent  dream,  what  should  we 
have  lost  irretrievably?  Imagine  the  whole 
Christian  structure  of  truth  and  practice 
tottering  to  its  fall,  the  whole  beautiful 
scheme  laid  in  ruins,  and  we  ourselves  stand- 
ing amid  the  wreck  and  overthrow,  how 
much  the  worse  off  would  it  leave  us? 
Have  we  risked  so  much,  ventured  so  far, 
committed  ourselves  so  deeply,  that  we 
should  be  engulfed  in  the  ruin?  If  Chris- 
tianity were  proved  a  woeful  mistake,  we 
should  be  disappointed,  of  course,  but  should 
we  be  of  all  men  most  miserable,  with  every- 
thing gone,  because  everything  had  been 
invested  in  the  enterprise,  with  all  lost,  be- 
cause all  had  been  given  up  for  this  hope? 

The  apostles  made  this  venture  of  faith, 
because  they  believed  that  they  were  treas- 
uring a  secret  so  rich  that  the  world  had  not 
a  price  big  enough  to  buy  it  away.  We 
shall  have  the  same  secret  in  sure  posses- 
sion, only  as  we  are  ready  to  make  the  same 
sacrifices. 


XII 
WHERE  THE  SKY  BEGINS 

WHERE  does  the  sky  begin? 
Washington  Gladden  points  out 
that  an  illusion  similar  to  that 
which  makes  us  think  of  the  sky  as  touching 
the  earth  somewhere  beyond  the  mountain 
tops  makes  us  also  conceive  of  the  spiritual 
world  as  a  distant  and  future  fact  instead  of 
a  present  and  immediate  reality.  Yet  we 
know  that  the  sky  is  not  an  arch  or  vault  of 
blue  far  up  beyond  the  earth.  It  is  every- 
thing above  the  ground.  As  we  walk  in 
the  streets  we  are  as  much  in  the  sky  as  the 
driver  of  an  aeroplane  who  circles  above  the 
clouds.  And  the  heavenly  realm  also  is 
around  and  near  us.  The  spiritual  and  the 
natural  penetrate  and  interpenetrate  each 
other. 

A  spiritual  consciousness  is  necessary  if 

we  are  to  have  any  real  religious  faith  or 

life.     Not  that  religion  is  mere  "  devotion  " 

simply   in   the   sense  of  pious   meditation. 

136 


WHERE  THE  SKY  BEGINS  137 

The  heart  and  soul  of  religion  lie  not  so 
much  in  the  contemplation  of  future  blessed- 
ness in  another  life  as  in  the  faithful  per- 
formance of  present  duties  in  this  life.  The 
work  of  the  Christian  must  be  like  that  of 
his  Master,  who  announced  to  the  enquiring 
disciples  of  John  the  Baptist  that  His 
credentials  were  to  be  seen  in  His  works: 
"  The  blind  receive  their  sight,  and  the  lame 
walk,  the  lepers  are  cleansed,  and  the  deaf 
hear,  the  dead  are  raised  up,  and  the  poor 
have  the  gospel  preached  to  them."  In- 
stead of  ceaseless  longings  for  a  heaven  yet 
to  be,  we  are  to  make  this  earth  itself  more 
heavenly  and  give  men  a  taste  of  happiness 
here  rather  than  a  promise  of  bliss  hereafter. 
Our  religion  must  be  healthy,  sane,  pro- 
ductive, useful  and  helpful,  cheery,  brave 
and  active,  the  Christianity  of  the  Christ 
who  came  down  from  the  mountain  and 
then  led  His  disciples  in  the  way  of  service 
as  He  went  about  doing  good. 

But — we  must  go  up  to  the  mountain,  too. 
If  there  is  a  spiritual  world,  it  is  the  height 
of  folly  to  live  without  any  thought  of  it. 
If  the  earthly  life  is  but  a  part  of  the  life 
eternal,  it  is  absurdly  stupid  to  live  the  part 
as  if  it  were  the  whole.  Our  Lord,  who 
gave  such  homely  counsel  and  so  practical 


138      THE  EXPERIMENT  OF  FAITH 

an  example  for  present  duties,  was  always 
going  apart  from  the  multitude;  it  is  char- 
acteristic of  Him  that  He  "lifted  up  His 
eyes  to  lleaven.,, 

So  the  first  essential  of  faith  is  the  effort 
to  enlarge  the  capacities  that  make  for 
faith.  The  loss  of  faith  ordinarily  comes 
through  neglect  of  the  faculties  by  which 
it  is  kept  alive.  Belief  does  not  go  down 
in  some  sharp  and  sudden  struggle  with 
doubt;  it  just  evaporates.  Men  allow 
themselves  to  become  so  immersed  in  the 
material  that  the  channels  of  the  spiritual 
are  clogged  and  the  religious  functions  cease 
to  operate. 

The  classic  illustration  of  this  is  found  in 
Darwin's  famous  autobiographical  confes- 
sion, in  which  he  tells  how  he  lost  his 
original  taste  for  music,  poetry  and  art. 
"  My  mind,"  he  adds,  "  seems  to  have  be- 
come a  kind  of  machine  for  grinding  general 
laws  out  of  large  collections  of  facts,  but 
why  this  should  have  caused  the  atrophy  of 
that  part  of  the  brain  alone  on  which  the 
higher  tastes  depend,  I  cannot  conceive.  If 
I  had  my  life  to  live  again,  however,  I 
should  make  it  a  rule  to  read  some  poetry 
and  listen  to  some  music  at  least  once  a 
week;  for  perhaps  the  part  of  my  brain  now 


WHEEE  THE  SKY  BEGINS  139 

atrophied  would  thus  have  been  kept  active 
through  use." 

We  have  generally  assumed  that  thoughts 
of  heaven  are  for  the  sick,  the  weak,  the 
aged  and  the  handicapped,  not  for  active 
youth  and  strong  manhood;  and  we  have 
forgotten  how  great  an  incentive  to  high 
ideals  and  fine  deeds  is  the  constant  recol- 
lection that  all  the  virtue  we  build  into  our 
characters  here  lasts  for  an  endless  eternity. 
Of  course  men  can  be  keenly  conscientious, 
splendidly  unselfish  and  morally  strong, 
without  the  thought  of  heaven,  just  as  a 
soldier  can  fight  on  when  there  is  small 
hope  of  victory;  but  if  we  are  to  work,  not 
with  dogged  persistence  but  with  abounding 
exultation  and  zealous  enthusiasm,  we  need 
the  incentive  of  victory  just  beyond.  The 
hope  of  heaven  is  for  "  bright  youth  "  as 
well  as  "snow  crowned  age,"  for  "  strong 
men  "  as  well  as  "  maidens  meek." 

Now  it  helps  to  recollectedness  of  the 
supernatural  and  the  eternal  if  we  think  of 
the  spiritual  realm  as  present,  not  future, 
immediate,  not  distant — not  a  region  far 
away  in  space,  but  a  higher  and  finer  sphere 
of  being,  which  permeates  the  natural 
sphere.  We  are  in  the  condition  of  a  man 
born  blind  and  deaf  and  living  in  two  worlds 


140      THE  EXPEEIMENT  OF  FAITH 

of  which  he  knows  next  to  nothing,  the 
world  of  colour  and  the  world  of  sound. 
What  he  needs,  in  order  to  know  the 
beauties  of  nature,  is  not  a  change  in  his 
surroundings  but  a  change  in  himself. 
Open  his  eyes  and  his  ears,  and  at  once  he 
is  introduced  into  a  new  world.  So  we  are 
living  already  in  the  spiritual  world  as 
really  as  we  ever  shall;  only  the  spiritual 
faculties  are  undeveloped  through  which  we 
can  perceive  its  sights  and  hear  its  sounds. 
If  we  would  have  a  conviction  of  immortal 
life  that  is  real  and  abiding,  we  can  reach 
it  only  by  patient  cultivation  of  the  faintest 
stirrings  of  spiritual  life  within  us  here  and 
now. 

The  natural  world  itself  helps  us  to  make 
a  beginning.  It  has  been  said  of  the  study 
of  nature  that  "  it  is  hardly  profane  to 
characterize  it  as  a  means  of  grace  to  man." 
Here  are  depths  of  mystery  which  defy  our 
search.  We  go  out  into  the  fields  or  the 
woods.  Everything  seems  so  solid  and  sub- 
stantial that  we  hardly  think  of  the  invisible 
movement  which  is  ceaselessly  going  on  be- 
neath the  visible  and  tangible.  Yet  there  is 
activity  everywhere — not  a  blade  of  grass 
or  a  leaf  on  the  trees  but  palpitates  with 
abounding  life.     If  we  had  eyes  that  could 


WHEEE  THE  SKY  BEGINS  141 

penetrate  through  leaf  and  stem,  we  should 
be  aware  that  all  was  in  restless  motion. 
Had  we  ears  to  hear  we  should  turn  mad 
almost  at  "  the  unceasing  roar  which  goes 
on  always  just  the  other  side  of  silence." 
Nor  is  that  all.  There  are  a  hundred 
thoughts  which  come  to  us  with  their  ques- 
tions about  nature's  mystery — whence  this 
world  came,  when  and  why  it  was  made, 
how  it  became  "  subject  to  vanity,"  whether 
it  is  more  than  fancy  which  seems  to  link  it 
in  sympathy  with  man's  moods,  what  dim 
and  mysterious  presence  gives  it  its  beauty 
and  power.  Does  not  all  this  necessarily 
suggest  that  there  is  a  world  of  spirit  be- 
neath the  world  of  sense,  penetrating  and 
vivifying  it,  so  that  what  we  see  is  but  the 
outward  and  visible  covering  of  hidden  and 
unseen  realities? 

Possibly  the  thought  may  help  us  to  un- 
derstand better  the  idea  of  sacramental 
grace.  Amid  all  the  controversy  in  the 
churches  over  the  Holy  Communion,  for 
example,  it  is  worthy  of  note  that  disputants 
have  all  agreed  that  the  Lord's  Supper  is  in 
some  way  a  means  for  the  reception  of  the 
divine  life.  And  why  should  not  grace  come 
by  such  a  sacrament?     Is  not  man  himself  a 


142      THE  EXPERIMENT  OF  FAITH 

sacrament:  his  body  the  outward  and 
visible  sign  of  the  invisible  spirit  within? 
Is  not  the  world,  for  that  matter,  the  great- 
est of  all  sacraments,  suggesting  through 
the  physical  senses  a  spiritual  life  that  lies 
behind  its  material  manifestations?  Is  it 
altogether  incongruous  to  suppose  that  the 
body  is  of  such  worth  and  dignity  that  it 
may  be  a  sharer  with  the  soul  in  redemption 
and  in  some  way  may  survive  and  develop 
in  a  future  state?  And  in  that  case,  is  it 
surprising  that  the  material  world  should  be 
drawn  upon  as  an  instrumental  means  for 
spiritual  help?  May  it  not  be  that  nature 
itself  has  some  interest  and  direct  concern, 
if  it  may  be  put  thus  boldly,  in  the  restora- 
tion of  the  human  race?  The  divine  plan 
may,  indeed,  have  larger  reaches  than  we 
have  ever  imagined.  At  any  rate,  it  is  the 
part  of  wise  humility  to  be  over-careful  and 
modest  in  denial  and  to  accept  as  a  working 
hypothesis  what  has  apparently  proved  its 
practical  power  in  the  experience  of  be- 
lievers from  the  beginning. 

Yet,  suppose  none  of  these  thoughts  ap- 
peal to  you,  does  not  the  experiment  of 
faith  still  urge  you  to  come  to  the  Lord's 
Table?  Empty  the  sacrament  of  all  mys- 
tery, if  you  will,  and  yet  it  is  the  dying 


WHERE  THE  SKY  BEGINS  143 

request  of  a  loving  Friend.  Jesus  Christ 
was  so  thoroughly  human.  He  had  all  our 
human  longing  not  to  be  forgotten,  though 
He  would  be  remembered  for  our  sakes 
rather  than  His  own.  Suppose  you  go  to 
His  memorial  feast,  just  because  He  asked 
it — not  carelessly  but  in  thoughtful  remem- 
brance, with  the  image  of  all  that  He  was 
in  your  mind,  with  His  words  in  your  heart, 
His  life  quietly  and  devoutly  recollected, 
with  sincere  desire  to  be  like  Him  and  some- 
thing of  earnest  purpose  to  be  what  you 
desire.  Explain  it  as  you  will,  sooner  or 
later  your  faith  will  grow.  There  are  those 
who  declare  that  it  will  know  no  limits. 
For  they  believe  that  the  living  Christ  is 
here  among  us,  powerful  to  bless  and  help. 
They  are  not  troubled  by  any  difficulties  of 
interpretation  as  to  His  resurrection  and 
ascension.  They  know  He  is  here — the 
living  Christ  who  was  dead,  but  is  alive 
forevermore. 

To  be  sure,  we  say  that  He  has  ascended 
into  heaven.  But  that  does  not  mean  that 
He  has  gone  away  from  earth.  Up  and 
down,  ascending  and  descending,  are 
figures  of  speech.  Heaven  is  a  higher  order 
of  life,  a  higher  sphere  of  being;  and  Christ 
is  here,  though  He  transcends  the  power  of 


144      THE  EXPEBIMENT  OF  FAITH 

mortal  eyes  to  see  Him.  It  is  significant 
that  the  evangelist  who  records  the  ascen- 
sion simply  says  that  "  a  cloud  received  Him 
out  of  their  sight." 

His  presence  is  a  hidden  presence.  All 
the  resurrection  appearances  had  prepared 
the  disciples  for  this.  One  moment  they 
were  alone  in  the  upper  chamber;  the  next 
moment,  He  came  and  stood  in  the  midst. 
Again,  they  were  fishing  by  the  Sea  of 
Galilee  and  they  looked  up,  to  find  Him 
standing  on  the  shore.  The  disciples  met 
Him  on  the  road  to  Emmaus  and  then  just 
as  they  recognized  Him  He  vanished.  Was 
it  not  that  they  might  understand  that  He 
was  always  at  hand,  whether  they  saw  Him 
or  not?  Only,  His  presence  is  a  veiled 
presence.  When  He  has  revealed  Himself 
so  often  that  they  are  convinced  beyond  the 
possibility  of  error  that  He  is  alive  and  is 
always  near  them,  then  comes  what  we  call 
the  Ascension — the  veil  drops,  the  cloud  re- 
ceives Him  and  He  is  seen  no  more.  But 
He  is  behind  the  veil,  above  the  cloud,  and 
they  are  not  alone.  "  Lo,  I  am  with  you 
always,  even  unto  the  end  of  the  world." 

If  to  any  of  us  it  seems  incredible,  may  it 
not  be  that  the  weakness  of  our  faith  is  due 
to  our  manner  of  life  ?     We  are  so  immersed 


WHERE  THE  SKY  BEGINS  145 

in  the  things  of  "  this  "  world  that  we  have 
paralyzed  the  senses  by  which  we  could 
become  conscious  of  the  "  other "  world. 
We  need  something  more  than  an  annual 
Easter  service  to  revive  our  dormant  facul- 
ties and  make  it  possible  for  us  to  believe  in 
the  life  which  is  unseen.  Our  faith  is 
largely  in  our  own  hands.  It  rests  with 
ourselves  whether  we  shall  strengthen  or 
dissipate  it. 

Where  does  our  sky  begin? 


XIII 
COMMUNICATED  CHARACTER 

GOODNESS  is  the  one  thing  you 
cannot  keep  to  yourself.  If  it  is 
real  goodness,  it  is  always  going 
out  from  your  heart  and  feeding  some  other 
man's  heart.  Whenever  you  do  something 
fine  and  courageous,  brave  and  true,  you 
make  truth  and  courage  easier  for  other 
men.  Your  character  is  that  on  which  some 
other  man  draws,  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously. The  wonderful  thing  about  a  hu- 
man personality  is  this,  that  it  is  always 
outflowing;  it  cannot  be  bound  in  or 
dammed  up;  it  is  a  reservoir  of  strength, 
always  fed  by  streams  from  without  and 
always  sending  out  its  own  streams  of  re- 
freshment. "  A  man's  courage,  a  man's  in- 
sight, a  man's  experience,  a  man's  form  of 
character,  these  things  flow  down  to  weaker 
souls  as  surely  as  water  flows  down  from  a 
height  above." 

That  would  seem  to  be  the  method  of 

approach  in  thinking  of  the  sacraments  of 

Christ.     He  wants  us  to  "  eat  of  His  flesh 

and  drink  of  His  blood  " ;  that  is,  He  wants 

146 


COMMUNICATED  CHARACTER      147 

us  to  absorb  His  life  and  grow  in  His 
strength.  And  we  can  do  it,  because 
character  is  communicable  and  life  is  always 
being  infused  with  other  life. 

That  "  contemptible  little  army  "  of  Eng- 
land which  withstood  the  first  terrific  as- 
saults of  the  German  war  machine  has  long 
since  ceased  to  exist.  Its  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand  men  gave  their  lives  that 
France  might  be  saved.  They  are  dead 
now — and  yet  they  live.  They  lived  in  the 
brave  hearts  of  the  millions  of  other  men 
who  fought  inch  by  inch  for  the  battle- 
scarred  fields  of  the  Somme  and  the  bruised 
hills  of  Arras  when  Germany's  great  drive 
began  more  than  three  years  afterwards. 
And  the  sturdy,  dogged,  hard-holding  sol- 
diers of  the  new  army  are  still  fed  with  food 
of  the  spirit  as  well  as  with  food  of  the 
body.  The  personal  weight  of  many  a 
leader  is  felt  in  all  the  armies  of  France  and 
England.  The  fine  spirit  of  the  Belgian 
king  has  touched  every  man  in  his  kingdom. 
"  What  have  you  left  now?  "  is  the  question 
the  cartoonist  makes  the  Kaiser  ask  of 
Albert,  and  the  reply,  "  I  have  my  soul," 
has  exercised  a  subtle  magnetism  that 
nerves  and  invigorates  every  brave  defender 
of  hearth  and  home.     There  are   men  in 


US      THE  EXPEKIMENT  OF  FAITH 

whose  presence  we  cannot  be  weak  or 
cowardly,  just  because  character  cannot  be 
confined  and  personality  cannot  be  pushed 
within  close  limits.  The  mind  gets  its 
power  as  the  body  gets  its  strength,  from 
what  it  feeds  on;  and  such  men  are  always 
feeding  other  men.  You  cannot  be  wise,  or 
experienced,  or  magnanimous,  or  coura- 
geous; you  cannot  have  the  soul  of  honour 
and  truth  and  virtue ;  you  cannot  have  great 
ideals  or  work  splendid  achievements,  with- 
out moulding  other  lives  who  get  their 
strength  from  yours. 

All  this,  however,  sounds  mystical  and 
unreal  to  the  average  man.  He  does  admire 
and  revere  moral  greatness,  but  because  the 
spirit  is  tied  down  to  earth,  he  does  not 
understand  that  what  he  sees  in  the  ideas 
and  enthusiasms  of  others  is  the  thing  that 
keeps  his  own  soul  from  starving. 

And  so  Jesus  Christ  tied  the  spiritual  and 
the  material  together  and  made  men  feed 
on  His  life  through  things  tangible  and 
visible.  It  is  not  that  He  needed  the  sacra- 
ments and  ordinances  for  the  conveying  of 
His  grace ;  it  is  not  a  question  of  what  He 
needs,  but  of  what  we  need.  Because  we 
are  dull  and  earth  bound  He  must  take  of 


COMMUNICATED  CHAEACTEE      149 

the  things  of  earth,  and  through  them  help 
us  towards  the  glory  of  heaven. 

It  is  not  so  hard  to  understand  the  sacra- 
ments of  Christianity  if  we  remember  that 
the  natural  and  the  supernatural  are  always 
penetrating  and  interpenetrating  each  other 
and  that  the  sky  begins  at  our  dust-covered 
feet  and  not  far  beyond  the  distant  hilltops. 

The  plain  man  who  is  troubled  by  the 
difficulties  of  theology  need  only  remember 
that  the  language  of  imagery  often  conveys 
truths  and  enforces  realities,  where  the 
language  of  scientific  prose  would  break 
down  in  the  effort  to  give  them  expression. 
It  is  commonly  said  that  when  the  Lord 
Christ  declared,  "This  is  My  Body;  this  is 
My  Blood,"  He  was  speaking  figuratively. 
Of  course  He  was,  in  a  sense.  When  He 
used  the  words,  His  body  stood  before  the 
disciples  unimpaired  and  He  surely  was  not 
speaking  in  humdrum  prose.  The  diffi- 
culty is,  that  when  men  say  that  His  lan- 
guage is  figurative  they  seem  to  think  that 
to  call  it  so  is  to  empty  it  of  all  meaning. 
Whereas  nearly  all  religious  language  is 
necessarily  figurative.  Its  figurative  char- 
acter, however,  warns  us  that  the  meaning 
to  be  conveyed  is  not  less,  but  more;  the 
very  need  of  a  figure  of  speech  shows  that 


150      THE  EXPEKIMENT  OF  FAITH 

the  idea  calls  for  a  heavier  burden  of  mean- 
ing than  ordinary  speech  can  bear.  The 
inner  conception  must  be  at  least  as  great 
as  the  metaphor  which  seeks  to  give  it  ex- 
pression. We  must  let  the  imagination  take 
in  all  that  the  figurative  language  stands 
for.  We  must  try  to  conceive  how  great 
a  reality  it  is  which  needs  such  speech  to 
express  its  richness  and  grandeur.  The 
language  is  mysterious  because  it  deals  with 
the  most  mysterious  thing  in  the  world,  the 
touch  of  one  personality  upon  another.  The 
figure  chosen  to  convey  its  meaning  puts  the 
mystery  in  the  simplest  form  so  that  the 
plainest  man  can  understand  it. 

One  thing  is  certain :  only  actual  expe- 
rience of  sacramental  grace  can  make  us 
sure  of  its  reality.  However  much  we  may 
know  by  experience  of  the  touch  of  living 
personalities  upon  our  own,  it  is  not  easy  for 
us  to  explain  the  undying  influence  of  per- 
sonalities of  the  past.  If  we  still  do  feel 
their  power  in  our  lives,  it  is  because  we 
are  sure  that  personalities  never  die  and 
that  these,  though  unseen,  are  still  alive  and 
active.  We  keep  our  hearts  open  to  their 
activity  because  we  will  not  let  ourselves 
forget  them. 

Perhaps    we    shall    best    begin    thinking 


COMMUNICATED  CHARACTER      151 

about  Holy  Communion  by  reminding  our- 
selves that  even  if  it  were  nothing  more, 
it  is  a  devout  act  of  remembrance.  I  am 
writing  for  commonplace  people;  just  plain, 
average,  humdrum,  unpoetical  folk,  whose 
souls  rarely  take  flight  from  the  edges  of 
this  busy  buying  and  selling  world.  To 
them  we  say :  Jesus  Christ,  the  world's  Best 
Friend,  did  not  want  to  be  forgotten.  He 
left  a  dying  request,  that  we  should  do  a 
certain  thing  for  Him  "  lest  we  forget." 
Go  to  your  communion  —  whether  you 
understand  or  not;  whether  you  are  quite 
sure  of  your  faith  or  not — just  because  He 
asked  it.  Go  in  that  way,  and  you  will  soon 
move  on  to  deeper  convictions — not  by 
adding  one  truth  to  another  truth,  but  by 
"  living  through  truth  to  other  truth." 
Feed  on  Christ  in  conscious  remembrance, 
as  the  son  feeds  on  the  father's  experience, 
the  scholar  on  the  teacher's  wisdom,  the 
soldier  on  the  officer's  courage. 

Only,  you  will  understand,  of  course,  that 
this  means  that  you  must  receive  the 
sacred  elements  in  the  spirit  of  Him  who 
offers  them  as  the  medium  by  which  He 
would  pass  to  you  His  strength.  This  in- 
volves two  things : 


152      THE  EXPEBIMENT  OP  FAITH 

You  must  come  in  prayer  and  penitence. 
The  churches  have  made  a  terrible  mistake 
in  talking  about  the  virtue  of  Holy  Com- 
munion in  mere  mechanical  terms.  "  Prayer 
is  necessary,  because  it  generates  and  pro- 
duces the  condition  of  soul  which  Christ 
requires.  He  cannot  touch  us  or  impart 
His  personality  to  our  souls  unless  we  are 
receptive.  Prayer  breaks  up  the  ground 
of  the  soul,  so  that  the  Sower  can  sow  the 
seed  of  His  own  personality  in  it." 

Again,  we  must  come  in  the  spirit  of 
sacrifice.  The  hidden  life  of  Christ,  which 
He  imparts  by  sacramental  grace,  is  the  life 
of  sacrifice.  How,  then,  can  we  come,  ex- 
pecting to  receive  a  gift,  disappointed  if  we 
do  not  feel  its  power,  tempted  to  depart  in 
unbelief  because  "  nothing  happens  " — when 
all  the  while  we  have  come  without  the 
least  intention  of  presenting  ourselves  a 
holy,  living  sacrifice,  acceptable  to  Him? 

One  of  the  compensations  of  war  is  that 
its  wealth  of  self-giving  has  shed  upon  life 
a  new  glory.  Its  awful  cloud  is  tinged  with 
the  silver  lining  of  splendid  sacrifice.  Men 
are  now  giving  of  themselves,  of  all  they 
possess  and  all  they  hold  dear,  simply  for 
the  sake  of  humanity. 

"  Tell  the  vicar  that  Jim  Smith  died  for 


COMMUNICATED  CHAEACTEE      153 

old  England  with  a  good  heart/'  said  one  of 
Kitchener's  First  Hundred  Thousand — and 
all  the  more  had  he  caught  the  very  spirit 
of  the  Master  because  then  (though  it  is 
not  true  now)  it  seemed  more  than  doubt- 
ful whether  England  was  worth  dying  for. 
One  of  the  chaplains  tells  of  a  scene  in  a 
hospital  back  of  the  front  in  which  he 
played  a  r6le  that  made  him  ashamed  of 
his  own  stupidity.  The  chaplains  are  never 
to  add  to  the  pain  of  the  wounded  by  speak- 
ing unnecessarily  of  their  wounds.  This 
chaplain  was  going  from  cot  to  cot,  here 
saying  a  word  of  cheer,  there  writing  a 
letter  back  home,  again  kneeling  for  a 
prayer,  when  he  came  to  the  bedside  of  a 
lad  who  had  been  sorely  hurt.  The  man's 
arm  was  gone  and  he  was  so  terribly  man- 
gled that  the  clergyman  turned  his  face 
aside  for  a  moment  and  then  in  his  embar- 
rassment asked  an  unfortunate  question. 

"How  did  you  lose  your  arm,  my  lad?  " 
he  said. 

The  boy's  face — he  was  hardly  more  than 
a  boy — was  aglow  with  a  brave  light  and 
his  tired  eyes  shone  as  he  answered: 

"  Padre,  I  didn't  lose  it.     I  gave  it." 

The  lad  had  made  a  sacrament  of  his  suf- 
fering.     Tens  of  thousands  like  him   are 


154      THE  EXPEBIMENT  OF  FAITH 

entering  in  the  same  way  into  the  sacrifice 
of  Christ,  "  filling  up  what  is  behind  of  His 
sufferings,"  to  use  St.  Paul's  bold  words. 
The  pity  is,  that  so  many  of  them  have  the 
spirit  of  Christ  and  are  wholly  unconscious 
of  their  own  Christianity.  They  have  iden- 
tified Christianity  with  something  other 
than  this  simple  following  of  the  Master. 
They  are  His,  without  knowing  it. 

And  the  greater  pity  is,  that  so  many  who 
profess  to  be  His  have  failed  to  catch  His 
spirit.  One  looks  at  those  who  are  coming 
forward  for  Holy  Communion  in  one  of  our 
churches.  They  have  just  said,  "  And  here 
we  offer  and  present  unto  Thee  ourselves, 
our  souls  and  bodies,  to  be  a  reasonable, 
holy  and  living  sacrifice  unto  Thee,"  and 
one  fails  to  see  that  the  words  have  meant 
anything.  Sometimes,  with  distress,  one 
suspects  a  certain  smugness  and  self-satis- 
faction that  not  only  makes  their  hearts  un- 
receptive  but  repels  others  from  coming  to 
the  sacred  feast.  There  is  nothing  magical 
about  Holy  Communion.  We  get  Christ's 
spirit  only  as  we  come  in  His  spirit.  Let 
us  demand  reality  in  religion;  set  ourselves 
a  test  by  which  we  try  our  own  sincerity. 

And  then — if  you  hesitate  about  becom- 
ing communicants   because   of   the   uncer- 


COMMUNICATED  CHARACTER      155 

tainty  of  your  present  faith,  remember  that 
whether  you  are  sure  or  not  you  can  at 
least  live  true  to  all  that  Holy  Communion 
stands  for.  You  do  believe  in  the  Christ 
life.  You  have  learned  from  Him  that  the 
greatest  thing  about  life  is  not  the  mere 
living.  You  know  that  self-dedication,  self- 
offering,  is  the  very  essence  of  the  Christ 
life.  Live  true  to  that  conviction.  Offer 
yourself;  consecrate  yourself;  give  yourself; 
and  then  come,  just  asking  God  to  accept 
you.  The  wonderful  thing  is,  that  you  will 
hardly  have  begun  to  come  in  that  way  be- 
fore you  will  know  of  a  certainty  that  the 
gift  you  have  received  far  surpasses  the 
gift  you  have  offered.  You  will  know  that 
you  have  received  of  Christ's  fullness,  grace 
for  grace.  Uniting  yourself  with  His  sacri- 
fice, you  will  find  yourself  united  in  His  life. 


XIV 
JUDGMENT  DAYS  OF  GOD 

NOWHERE,  in  matters  of  credal 
interpretation,  do  we  find  a 
sharper  contrast  than  that  be- 
tween the  apostolic  expectation  of  a  sudden 
and  immediate  return  of  the  Lord  in  judg- 
ment and  modern  belief  in  the  second  com- 
ing as  a  continued  process  rather  than  a 
single  event. 

There  is  room  for  large  liberty  of  inter- 
pretation of  the  creeds.  No  one  would  de- 
mand a  bald  literalism,  for  example,  in  our 
understanding  of  such  clauses  as  the  one 
which  declares  that  our  Lord  ascended  into 
heaven  and  sitteth  on  the  right  hand  of  the 
Father.  It  is  generally  recognized  as  a 
perfectly  legitimate  interpretation  if  we  re- 
gard the  statement  as  a  declaration  of  belief 
in  the  fact  that  the  incarnate  Son  has  re- 
sumed the  dignity  and  glory  of  His  first 
estate.  No  one  asserts  that  heaven  must 
necessarily  be  a  place  "  above  the  bright 
blue  sky  "  and  that  somewhere  within  its 
precincts  there  is  a  great  throne,  with  two 
156 


JUDGMENT  DAYS  OF  GOD         157 

others  on  either  side,  and  three  divine  Per- 
sons, in  the  sense  in  which  we  understand 
personality  and  individuality,  seated  thereon 
in  glory! 

Again,  in  our  interpretation  of  belief  in  a 
resurrection  body  we  are  not  bound  to  the 
old  idea  that  the  various  particles  of  our 
own  bodies  are  gathered  somehow  from  the 
four  winds  of  heaven  and  collected  once 
more  into  a  bodily  structure  in  form  similar 
to  that  which  we  now  know.  There  is  room 
for  endless  speculation  as  to  what  the  body 
of  the  resurrection  was  in  the  case  of  our 
Lord  and  as  to  what  it  will  be  in  our  own 
case. 

In  this  sense,  therefore,  the  declaration 
that  "fixity  of  interpretation  is  of  the  es- 
sence of  the  creeds  "  is  the  very  opposite  of 
the  facts.  We  ought  to  avail  ourselves  of 
all  the  light  which  may  be  thrown  upon  a 
subject  by  modern  science.  We  must  aim 
at  unfolding  elements  of  the  truth  by  using 
all  the  aids  which  criticism  and  research 
have  placed  at  our  command. 

It  is  quite  possible  to  do  this  while  re- 
maining perfectly  loyal  to  the  record.  There 
is  a  plain  line  to  be  drawn  somewhere  be- 
tween the  extreme  of  literal  interpretation 
of  any  article  of  faith  and  the  other  extreme 


158      THE  EXPEEIMENT  OF  FAITH 

of  an  "  interpretation  "  which  is  really  de- 
nial. We  may  not  substitute  for  a  state- 
ment of  fact  some  so-called  spiritualization 
which  actually  empties  the  statement  of 
any  historical  meaning.  We  may  not  con- 
strue the  declared  facts  in  such  way  as 
actually  to  reject  them. 

The  point  we  have  been  trying  to  empha- 
size in  these  studies  is  that  there  is  a  middle 
position  between  the  baldly  literal  and  the 
wildly  liberal.  This  via  media  is  not  so 
much  a  matter  of  position  as  of  spirit.  It 
sees  in  the  insistence  upon  a  freer  interpre- 
tation, in  revulsion  against  the  mechanical 
delimitations  of  over-orthodoxy,  a  real  at- 
tempt to  discover  the  spiritual  content  of 
faith. 

After  all,  most  religious  discussion  is 
largely  a  question  of  view-point.  If  oppos- 
ing disputants  could  only  rid  themselves  of 
the  controversial  spirit  and  seek  each  to 
understand  the  other,  there  would  often  be 
found  a  middle  ground  of  agreement.  What 
we  most  need  is  that  the  conservative  be- 
liever shall  honestly  try  to  see  the  difficulties 
of  the  man  who  moves  towards  faith 
stumblingly;  especially  that  he  shall  try  to 
give  him  credit  for  putting  faith  to  the  test 
of  actual,  every-day  worth  and  demanding 


JUDGMENT  DAYS  OF  GOD  159 

in  each  case  to  know  what  it  means  and 
how  it  works  and  whether  it  is  of  practical 
importance.  We  must  try,  also,  to  under- 
stand the  spirit  which  requires  that  the 
Church  shall  be  truth-seeking  as  well  as 
truth-bearing  and  truth-teaching. 

Equally  we  have  a  right  to  ask  that  all 
honest  enquiry  shall  be  undertaken  with 
due  modesty  and  reverent  humility.  It 
must  not  start  with  the  unavowed  assump- 
tion that  "  former  things  have  passed 
away  "  and  that  everything  must  necessarily 
be  new  to  be  true. 

We  may  illustrate  this  point  in  the  at- 
tempt to  reconcile  the  old  truth  and  the  new 
as  to  the  judgment.  Where  a  simpler  age 
looked  for  some  sudden  and  sublime  inter- 
ruption of  the  natural  order,  ending  in  tre- 
mendous collapse,  we  see  the  unchanging 
operation  of  law.  The  world  did  not  come 
into  being  suddenly,  but  by  gradual  evolu- 
tion, and  we  have  not  expected  it  to  end 
instantly  in  unparallelled  catastrophe. 
Through  centuries  and  ages,  it  has  pursued 
its  accustomed  course;  human  history  has 
moved  on  slowly  from  cause  to  effect; 
human  life  proceeds  usually  along  ordered 
prosaic  lines,  and  we  find  it  hard  to  picture 


160      THE  EXPEEIMENT  OF  FAITH 

a  terrific  interruption  and  cessation  of  the 
universal  order  coming  with  sublime  unex- 
pectancy. 

Here,  perhaps,  the  newer  thought  helps 
us  to  correct  the  excessive  realism  of  the 
earlier.  That  vivid  sense  of  the  nearness  of 
Christ's  coming  which  was  characteristic  of 
the  apostolic  Church  was  not  altogether  a 
mistaken  expectation.  Centuries  rolled  by 
and  the  end  came  not.  The  world  lived  on. 
Yet  the  judgment  came,  nevertheless.  To 
the  man  of  that  day  the  destruction  of 
Jerusalem  seemed  literally  the  end  of  the 
world.  The  judgment  was  the  death  throe 
of  an  old  era  and  the  birth-pang  of  a  new. 

The  prophecies  of  the  judgment,  as  they 
are  recorded  in  the  Gospel  narratives,  paint 
a  picture  without  perspective.  In  the  fore- 
ground, in  detail,  is  the  immediate  future, 
with  the  prophecy  of  the  destruction  of  Jeru- 
salem; in  the  background  the  outlines  of 
the  distant  event.  The  "  values,"  however, 
are  not  well  defined  and  foreground  and 
background  are  not  clearly  distinguishable. 
What  should  be  in  dimmer  light  is  placed 
in  sharp  relief.  Probably  it  was  best  that  it 
should  be  so,  if  for  that  age  there  was  to 
be  any  vivid  appreciation  of  the  divine  fact. 

That  simple  faith  was  never  a  delusion. 


JUDGMENT  DAYS  OF  GOD  161 

Again  and  again  the  hosts  have  gathered  at 
Armageddon.  The  destruction  of  Jerusa- 
lem, the  fall  of  Rome,  the  Reformation  in 
the  Church,  the  French  Revolution,  now 
the  Great  War,  have  registered  judgment. 
There  were  prophets  of  the  Reformation, 
for  example — Huss,  Wickliffe,  Catherine  of 
Sienna — as  there  were  prophets  of  the  first 
coming,  and  when  the  judgment  had  laid  its 
heavy  hand  upon  the  Church  men  saw  that 
the  faith  and  expectation  of  believers  had 
not  been  disappointed. 

I  pray  for  peace ;  peace  yet  is  but  a  prayer. 

How  many  wars  have  been  in  my  brief  years ! 
yet  do  I  not  despair 

Of  peace,  that  slowly  through  far  ages  nears. 

Though  not  to  me  the  golden  morn  appears, 
My  faith  is  perfect  in  time's  issue  fair. 

For  man  doth  build  on  an  eternal  scale, 

And  his  ideals  are  framed  of  hope  deferred ; 
The  millennium  came  not:  yet  Christ  did  not 

fail, 
Though  ever  unaccomplished  is  His  Word ; 
Him  Prince  of  Peace,  though  unenthroned,  we 
hail, 
Supreme  when  in  all  bosoms  He  be  heard. 

This  aspect  of  Christ's  coming — what 
Westcott  calls  "  the  truthful  and  reverent 
recognition  of  God's  manifestations  in  his- 


162      THE  EXPEKIMENT  OF  FAITH 

tory  and  in  society  " — is  of  vital  practical 
importance.  It  takes  faith  to  see  it;  but 
faith  is  always  needed  for  the  recognition  of 
spiritual  realities.  "  None  but  believers 
saw  the  risen  Christ  during  the  great  forty 
days;  none  but  believers  see  Christ  now  in 
the  great  changes  of  human  affairs." 

The  thought  was  urged  by  Dr.  Figgis  in 
a  book  issued  before  the  war,  which  seems 
now  to  have  been  written  with  almost 
prophetic  insight.  In  his  Civilization  at  the 
Crossroads  he  pictured  ours  as  an  age  of 
transition.  All  things  around  us  were 
crumbling.  Old  ideas  in  ethics  and  politics, 
in  society  and  government,  were  losing  their 
force.  Men  were  plunging  into  new  and 
hitherto  untried  experiments.  It  was  a  day 
of  new  departures.  We  were  in  the  midst 
of  a  process  not  unlike  that  of  western 
Europe  in  the  fifth  century,  when  the  world 
organization  was  on  its  death-bed. 

Hardly  had  he  drawn  his  picture  when 
the  Great  War  broke  upon  us.  That  surely 
has  taught  us  that  we  are  living  in  an  awful 
judgment  day  of  God.  All  things  are  being 
put  to  the  test  of  fire.  Men  are  wondering 
what  the  end  shall  be.  To  those  who  come 
after,  this  will  be  seen  as  the  close  of  an 
aeon.      What    new    life    shall    spring    up, 


JUDGMENT  DAYS  OP  GOD  163 

phoenix-like,  out  of  the  ashes  of  the  old,  we 
do  not  know;  where  we  shall  find  ourselves 
and  how  our  very  manner  of  life  shall 
change  we  are  yet  to  see.  But  for  society, 
for  nations,  for  the  Church,  for  individuals, 
the  judgment  has  come.  Sentence  is  passing 
on  institutions  and  men.  Prophets  are  al- 
ready seeking  to  turn  the  judgment  to  its 
divinely  appointed  use.  Always  and  every- 
where we  begin  to  see  God  as  the  Judge. 
He  putteth  down  one  and  setteth  up  an- 
other. Everywhere  the  judgment  moves 
continuously.  Our  own  nation;  our  prop- 
erty and  prosperity;  the  methods  by  which 
we  gained  the  one,  the  use  to  which  we 
have  put  the  other;  society  and  the  stand- 
ards with  which  it  is  content;  the  Church 
to  which  we  belong,  its  failure  in  rich  ex- 
perience, its  fear  of  freedom,  its  pathetic 
weakness  as  a  social  force;  Christendom, 
with  its  unhappy  divisions;  the  common 
motives  of  life;  the  principles  by  which  our 
own  lives  have  been  governed — all  are  be- 
ing brought  to  the  test  of  divine  approval  or 
disapproval.  Over  against  all  stands  Christ 
our  Judge,  crying  as  He  cried  over  Jeru- 
salem, "  If  they  had  known — if  they  had 
only,  only  known — the  things  which  belong 
to  their  peace." 


164      THE  EXPEEIMENT  OF  FAITH 

Once  to  every  man  and  nation 

Comes  the  moment  to  decide, 
In  the  strife  of  truth  with  falsehood, 

For  the  good  or  evil  side ; 
Some  great  cause,  God's  new  Messiah, 

Offering  each  the  bloom  or  blight  — 
And  the  choice  goes  on  forever 

'Twixt  that  darkness  and  that  light. 

Though  the  cause  of  evil  prosper, 

Yet  'tis  truth  alone  is  strong ; 
Though  her  portion  be  the  scaffold, 

And  upon  the  throne  be  wrong  — 
Yet  that  scaffold  sways  the  future, 

And,  behind  the  dim  unknown, 
Standeth  God  within  the  shadow, 

Keeping  watch  above  His  own. 

Now  all  this  gives  a  starting  point  for 
faith.  In  the  first  place,  it  makes  it  less 
difficult  to  conceive  of  the  final  judgment, 
a  judgment  which  shall  be  the  consumma- 
tion of  all  lesser  visitations,  a  last  manifesta- 
tion of  the  justice  and  holiness  of  God. 
Nor  will  it  be  so  difficult  to  accept  the 
apostolic  belief  in  the  suddenness  of  the 
judgment.  The  early  expectation  of  its  im- 
mediacy was  not  an  essential  part  of  the 
belief  and  was  to  some  extent  an  accommo- 
dation to  the  Jewish  eschatology.  Its  sud- 
denness and  finality,  however,  seem  to  be 
elements  of  permanent  value.  They  are  not 
hard  to  accept  now.    Consider  the  situation 


JUDGMENT  DAYS  OF  GOD  165 

at  the  outbreak  of  the  war.  The  mass  of 
people  could  not  realize  it  even  when  it  had 
come.  In  England  men  like  Earl  Roberts 
had  predicted  that  the  conflict  was  inevi- 
table, had  told  of  Germany's  long  and  care- 
ful preparation,  had  pointed  out  the  peril  of 
her  ambition  for  world-power,  but  none 
would  hear.  When  at  length  the  Serbian 
assassination,  like  a  torch,  set  all  Europe 
ablaze,  it  still  could  not  be  realized  to  what 
gigantic  proportions  the  horror  would  grow. 
Here  in  America  especially,  in  our  national 
isolation,  few  could  be  made  to  see  that 
there  was  any  likelihood  of  our  being  drawn 
into  the  struggle.  There  was  a  week  in 
July,  1914,  when  the  nations  rested  in 
tranquil  security  and  in  another  week  we 
were  involved  in  a  world  catastrophe  so 
terrible  that  it  paralyzes  thought.  It  was  a 
startling  and  inconceivably  sudden  turn  of 
events,  which  makes  it  easier  to  understand 
how  there  may  be  a  like  sudden  manifesta- 
tion in  the  end  of  time.  It  gives  vivid  reality 
to  descriptions  of  that  judgment  which  once 
seemed  childish  in  their  crude  simplicity  of 
picturesque  metaphor. 

In  that  great  day  of  the  Lord  all  hidden 
things  will  be  made  clear,  all  riddles  solved, 
all  mysteries  revealed,  all  untruth  exposed, 


166      THE  EXPEKIMENT  OF  FAITH 

all  injustice  overthrown,  all  wrongs  righted 
and  every  person  and  everything  seem 
absolutely  as  they  are  before  God.  Whether 
the  manifestation  come  suddenly  or  not,  it 
will  be  sudden  for  us.  Underneath  the  ac- 
customed order,  all  the  while,  the  slow 
process  of  preparation  is  going  on,  though 
we  see  it  not,  just  as  events  were  moving 
steadily  towards  this  world  disaster,  though 
we  were  wholly  unaware  of  the  impending 
evil.  For  long  years  the  molten  masses  of 
the  volcano  gather  in  turbulent  power  be- 
fore the  sudden  eruption  hurls  them  forth 
to  blight  and  destroy. 

And  ourselves — what  does  all  this  mean 
for  us?  Surely,  we  see  that  we,  too,  are 
always  living  in  a  judgment  day  of  God  and 
that  the  judgments  passed  upon  us  now,  day 
by  day,  shall  at  last  be  summed  up  forever 
in  a  final  verdict.  There  will  then  be  no 
loose  standard  of  public  opinion  to  give  a 
false  sense  of  security,  no  absorbing  occu- 
pation to  distract  our  thought,  but  only 
solitude  and  awful  silence,  in  which  we  shall 
see  ourselves  (for  the  first  time)  in  reveal- 
ing light  and  know  how  we  appear  in  the 
sight  of  God. 

Nothing  has  been  said  in  this  essay  to- 


JUDGMENT  DAYS  OF  GOD  167 

wards  faith  of  any  theory  of  the  atonement. 
It  has  not  seemed  necessary  that  anything 
should  be  said.  The  time  is  long  past  when 
men  are  concerned  with  the  old  controver- 
sies. All  that  could  shed  light  on  the 
mystery  of  redemption  has  been  written 
long  ago. 

It  is  enough  now  to  add  that  the  thought 
of  judgment  does  of  necessity  bring  in  its 
train  the  thought  of  the  need  of  some  aton- 
ing and  redeeming  power.  It  makes  us  see 
that  sin  is  more  than  an  unfortunate  slip, 
a  foolish  mistake,  a  grave  misfortune.  Sin 
is  the  deliberate  setting  of  our  wills  against 
the  will  of  God.  There  is  need  of  some 
unmistakable  disclosure  of  the  heart  of  God 
before  we  can  see  this.  Such  a  revelation, 
surpassingly  great,  we  have  in  the  cross  of 
Christ. 

So  atonement  and  redemption  must  be 
viewed  together.  Just  as  any  serious  at- 
tempt to  measure  our  lives  over  against  the 
life  of  Jesus  Christ  convinces  us  that  He  is 
a  direct  gift  of  God,  so  any  such  comparison 
forces  upon  us  a  sense  of  the  awfulness  of 
sin  and  of  the  need  of  deliverance.  In  the 
death  of  Christ,  and  nowhere  else,  we  see 
the  shame  and  the  pain  of  sin.  There  its 
full  horror  is  realized.    Just  as  "  human  for- 


168      THE  EXPEKIMENT  OF  FAITH 

giveness  in  its  best  forms  is  saved  from 
being  demoralizing  when  the  forgiven  child 
is  made  to  see  the  pain  its  fault  has  brought 
to  the  forgiving  parent,"  so  do  we  discover, 
as  the  cross  reveals  to  us  sin's  exceeding 
hatefulness,  the  awful  analogue  of  such  hu- 
man forgiveness  in  that  divine  forgiveness 
which  comes  indeed  freely,  but  comes  by 
divine  Love  itself  bearing,  before  our  eyes, 
our  sins  or  their  results.  In  the  supreme 
moment  of  pardon  we  see  that  pardon  is 
made  possible  because  at  last  we  see  sin  as 
God  sees  it. 

"  Come  down  from  the  cross,  O  Thou 
Holy  One  of  God  " — so  cried  the  African 
saint  in  the  fervour  of  adoring  gratitude 
and  with  a  passionate  warmth  of  which  our 
calmer  and  colder  spirits  seem  incapable — 
"  come  down  from  the  cross ;  it  is  I  that 
should  be  there,  not  Thou." 


XV 

THE  DEMAND  FOR  REALITY 

JESUS  CHRIST  and  His  religion  come 
to  us  charged  with  reality.  One  thing 
He  always  asked  of  those  who  would 
follow  Him:  they  must  be  absolutely  sin- 
cere. 

A  rich  young  man,  asking  the  way  of  life, 
began  his  question  with  a  complimentary 
salutation,  "  Good  Master."  Jesus  brings 
him  up  with  a  sharp  turn.  Just  what  does 
the  young  man  mean?  Is  he  sure  that  he 
knows  himself?  "Why  callest  thou  Me 
good?  "  The  Master  wants  no  mere  polite 
phraseology,  no  vague  and  empty  compli- 
ment, no  speech  that  is  not  perfectly  genu- 
ine. He  wants  reality.  He  rigidly  tests 
every  expression  of  devotion.  He  is  im- 
patient— divinely  impatient — of  anything 
that  savours  in  the  least  of  conventional  and 
careless  acceptance  of  Him  or  His  claims. 
He  wants  only  love  and  loyalty  that  are 
beyond  question. 

An  emotional  woman  in  the  crowd,  on 
one  occasion,  cried  out,  "  Blessed  is  the 
womb  that  bare  Thee."  She  was  thinking 
169 


170      THE  EXPERIMENT  OP  FAITH 

how  wonderful  it  was  to  have  such  a  son, 
how  enviable  was  the  lot  of  the  mother  who 
had  held  Him  as  a  child  to  her  bosom.  She 
was  day-dreaming,  instead  of  facing  actual- 
ities, and  her  dream  broke  out  in  emotional 
sentimentality,  in  a  longing  for  a  relation 
that  could  never  be  hers.  The  Master 
brought  her  back  to  solid  realities:  "Yea, 
rather,  blessed  are  they  that  hear  the  word 
of  God  and  keep  it." 

The  man  out  of  whom  Christ  had  cast 
the  demons,  in  a  fervid  burst  of  emotion, 
asked  to  join  the  apostolic  company.  It  was 
an  impossible  place  for  him,  and  Jesus 
pointed  him  to  a  plain,  humdrum,  every-day 
duty :  "  Go  back  home  to  your  family  and 
your  friends  and  tell  them  what  great  things 
I  have  done  for  you."  Another  said,  "Lord, 
I  would  follow  Thee  whithersoever  Thou 
goest."  The  Master  brought  him  back  to 
earth  by  telling  him  of  the  hardships  of  such 
a  service  ("  Foxes  have  holes  and  birds  of 
the  air  have  nests,  but  the  Son  of  Man  hath 
not  where  to  lay  His  head  ")  and  we  hear 
no  more  of  the  proffered  discipleship. 

In  every  case  there  is  a  sharp  reminder 
of  homely  practicalities  and  a  warning 
against  any  expression  of  religious  feeling 
that  has  not  the  note  of  absolute  genuine- 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  REALITY       171 

ness.  He  wants  us  to  be  perfectly  honest 
with  ourselves  and  perfectly  straightfor- 
ward and  unaffected  in  our  words.  In  His 
presence  anything  like  cant  or  unreality 
stands  out  in  the  white  light  of  truth  and 
shames  us  into  sincerity. 

One  wonders  how  some  of  us  are  standing 
the  test  now.  The  man  outside  probably 
sees  something  of  unreality  among  pro- 
fessed believers.  Possibly,  without  his  even 
being  aware  of  the  thought  in  the  back  of 
his  mind,  this  is  one  of  the  things  that  keeps 
him  outside.  Press  him  hard  and  he  would 
probably  confess  that  there  is  a  certain 
smug  professionalism  about  some  of  the 
clergy  that  irritates  him.  Their  immunity 
from  friendly  criticism  has  been  disastrous 
and  they  have  dropped  into  a  habit  of  ready 
moralizing  that  seems  to  him  wholly  per- 
functory. Their  words  do  not  always  ring 
true.  The  one  thing  we  clergy  need  most 
to  pray  against  is  the  special  ecclesiastical 
sin  of  insincerity.  Our  wills  may  be  weak 
and  our  lives  faulty,  but  at  least  let  us  be 
sure  that  we  speak  only  when  we  actually 
believe  and  feel  all  we  say.  There  is  a 
glibness  of  spiritual  speech  that  verges  close 
to   sacrilege   and   no   one   is   more   keenly 


172      THE  EXPERIMENT  OP  FAITH 

sensitive  to  it  than  the  man  who  is  outside 
the  Christian  fellowship.  He  looks  in  with 
critical  eyes,  not  because  he  wants  to 
criticize  or  is  even  aware  that  he  does 
criticize,  but  because  he  is  unconsciously 
"  sizing  up  "  those  who  are  in  a  different 
position  from  himself.  It  may  be  that  he  is 
longing  for  contact  with  somebody  who  can 
understand  his  difficulties  and  help  him  to- 
wards faith,  and  he  is  disappointed  at  miss- 
ing what  he  so  sorely  needs  to  help  him  on 
his  way.  He  wants  the  clergyman  to  be  a 
real  man,  big-minded  and  big-hearted,  free 
from  pettiness  of  spirit  or  lack  of  charity 
and  generosity  towards  those  who  cannot 
see  with  him  eye  to  eye.  He  wants  a  min- 
ister to  be  "  straight  as  a  string,"  frank, 
sincere,  genuine,  true;  and  when  he  meets 
such  a  man  he  greets  him  with  great  joy. 
The  suspicion  that  some  are  different  is  the 
true  source  of  much  of  his  doubt.  His  diffi- 
culties would  dissolve  if  more  often  he  could 
see  in  the  fruit  of  Christian  experience  the 
assurance  of  the  Christian  hope.  He  is 
quietly  observing  not  the  clergyman  alone, 
but  his  congregation,  and  as  quietly  making 
up  his  mind  about  the  genuineness  of  their 
faith. 

And  we  also  may  demand  the  same  down- 


THE  DEMAND  FOE  BEAUTY       173 

right  sincerity  of  the  man  or  woman  out- 
side. We,  too,  are  human  enough  to  be 
irritated  by  cant  and  unreality.  Personally, 
my  own  pet  aversion  is  the  woman  who  has 
read  some  lovely  little  book  about  a  pious 
fisherman  or  a  godly  village  shoemaker  and 
complacently  informs  me,  as  if  she  had  made 
a  great  spiritual  discovery,  that  this  is  her 
ideal  of  religion,  when  she  knows  and  I 
know  (and  she  ought  to  know  that  I  know) 
that  she  has  not  the  faintest  notion  of 
putting  the  ideal  into  practice.  I  get  almost 
as  impatient  with  the  man  who  tells  me 
that  he  likes  to  worship  God  out  under  the 
blue  sky,  and  then  loses  his  temper  when  I 
ask  how  much  of  his  outdoor  time  is  actually 
given  to  heavenly  aspirations.  Next  after 
him  I  rank  the  broad-minded  people  who 
like  all  churches  and  love  none,  who  see 
good  in  all  and  go  nowhere. 

These  chapters  have  been  written  for 
men  who  are  trying  to  be  real.  Yet  is  there 
not  a  possibility  that  even  with  the  best  of 
intentions  they  too  have  not  always  faced 
facts  squarely?  That  is  one  reason  for 
pressing  home  the  duty  of  living  true  to 
truth.  We  all  of  us  need  to  do  some  heart 
searching  every  now  and  then.  A  very 
little  self-examination  will  show  that  pos- 


174      THE  EXPEKIMEOT  OF  FAITH 

sibly  we  are  content  with  an  ideal  without 
making  any  real  effort  to  follow  it.  Per- 
haps the  war  will  shame  out  of  us  our 
selfishness  and  self-satisfaction  and  narrow 
class  prejudice,  and  make  us  think  of  some- 
thing other  than  our  own  comfort  or  our 
own  opinions,  our  position  and  our  reputa- 
tion. God  knows  some  of  us  need  a  moral 
earthquake  to  shake  us  out  of  our  self- 
esteem.  In  all  charity,  are  there  not  many 
who,  like  the  rich  young  man,  have  been 
paying  compliments  to  a  Master  who  would 
be  worshipped?  Have  they  been  using 
reverential  language  about  the  character  of 
Jesus  Christ,  without  giving  the  subject 
very  serious  thought,  and  consequently 
without  well  weighing  the  implications  of 
their  words?  It  would  be  worth  while  for 
them  to  put  their  admiration  for  Christ  to 
the  test  of  reality  and  ask  conscientiously 
whether  their  reverence  is  genuine  enough 
to  make  them  translate  admiration  into 
action.  It  has  already  been  shown  that  this 
is  the  path  to  faith. 

As  with  our  conduct,  so  with  our  in- 
tellectual conceptions.  The  effort  to  be 
real  in  all  one  says  about  Christ  brings  one 
back  inevitably  to  St.  Augustine's  dilemma, 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  REALITY       175 

"  Christ,  if  He  is  not  God,  is  not  a  good 
man."  The  point  has  never  been  pressed 
more  sharply  than  by  Canon  Liddon.  "  It 
is  easier,"  he  puts  it,  "  to  believe  that  in  a 
world  where  we  are  encompassed  by  mys- 
teries, where  our  own  being  is  itself  a  con- 
summate mystery,  the  Moral  Author  of  the 
wonders  about  us  should,  for  great  moral 
purposes,  have  taken  to  Himself  a  created 
form,  than  that  the  one  Human  Life  which 
realizes  the  ideal  of  humanity,  the  one  Man 
who  is  at  once  perfect  strength  and  perfect 
tenderness,  the  one  Pattern  of  our  race  in 
whom  its  virtues  are  combined  and  from 
whom  its  vices  are  eliminated,  should  have 
been  guilty,  when  speaking  of  Himself,  of 
an  arrogance,  of  a  self-seeking,  of  an  in- 
sincerity, which  if  admitted  must  justly 
degrade  Him  far  below  the  moral  level 
of  millions  among  His  unhonoured  wor- 
shippers." Does  not  our  Lord's  human 
glory  fade  before  our  eyes  when  we  at- 
tempt to  conceive  of  it  apart  from  His 
divinity?  He  is  perfect  as  Man  only  be- 
cause He  is  truly  God.  If  He  is  not  God, 
He  is  not  a  humble  and  an  unselfish  man. 
When  we  call  Him  "  Good  Master,"  or  use 
some  modern  equivalent  for  the  rich  young 
man's  word  of  reverent  esteem,  reality  de- 


176      THE  EXPEBIMENT  OP  FAITH 

mands  that  we  follow  our  thought  about 
Christ  into  all  its  logical  meaning,  or  at  least 
make  sure  in  our  own  minds  that  we  know 
what  we  mean  by  it  ourselves. 

The  whole  purpose  of  the  creed  is  to  give 
expression  to  the  faith  of  the  Church  about 
Christ.  It  is  the  accredited  language 
through  which,  for  centuries,  Christ's  fol- 
lowers have  sought  to  voice  their  loyalty  to 
His  Person.  All  of  its  clauses  are  to  be  in- 
terpreted in  subordination  to  this  main  pur- 
pose. Viewed  as  explanatory  of  this,  or  as 
guarding  the  truth  about  Jesus,  their  diffi- 
culties are  more  readily  resolved.  One  can 
hardly  conceive  of  a  society  pledging  itself 
to  His  service  on  any  smaller  foundation  of 
faith.  The  creed  is  more  than  creed.  It 
is  at  once  creed  and  character,  dogma  and 
devotion,  logic  and  life. 

Nor  is  it  merely  a  personal  declaration,  it 
is  a  corporate  confession  of  belief.  It  is  the 
expression  of  the  best  thought  of  the  best 
minds  of  all  the  ages,  as  they  have  sought 
to  make  Christ  known,  with  all  that  He 
means  to  them.  Wisdom  was  not  born  with 
ourselves.  The  simple-hearted,  loyal  souls 
who  long  ago,  in  troublous  times,  forged 
out  the  words  of  the  creed  in  stress  and 


THE  DEMAND  FOE  EEALITY       177 

strain,  as  they  tried  to  understand  Christ 
better,  were  but  seeking  for  language  in 
which  to  explain  their  own  certain  experi- 
ence and  in  which  also  to  "  set  forth  in  order 
a  declaration  of  those  things  which  are  most 
surely  believed  among  us,  even  as  they  de- 
livered them  unto  us,  who  were  eye-wit- 
nesses and  ministers  of  the  word."  If  we 
can  accept  this  central  truth  and  try  to  make 
it  a  core  of  tremendous  purpose,  may  we  not 
honestly  use  the  creed,  even  though  we  have 
not  yet  entered  fully  into  all  its  richness  of 
meaning? 

This  is  not,  as  Professor  Drown  has  so 
well  pointed  out,  an  arbitrary  acceptance  of 
statements  on  the  mere  basis  of  an  external 
authority.  It  is,  rather,  to  suggest  that  "  in 
religious  and  Christian  matters,  as  well  as 
in  scientific  and  political  matters,  the  indi- 
vidual may  well  take  account  of  an  experi- 
ence that  is  wider  than  his  own.  In  scien- 
tific and  in  political  matters  we  constantly 
live  in  reliance  on  such  wider  experience. 
May  not  the  individual  Christian,  expressing 
his  loyalty  to  Christ  and  to  the  fellowship 
that  comes  from  Him,  naturally  expect  to 
find  in  the  creed  which  is  the  outcome  of 
that  fellowship,  elements  that  go  beyond  his 
own  experience?  " 


178      THE  EXPERIMENT  OP  PAITH 

That  means,  in  other  words,  to  adopt  the 
childlike  attitude  of  true  discipleship.  That, 
again,  means  full  recognition  of  the  fact 
that  "  spiritual  things  are  spiritually  dis- 
cerned " — and  the  essence  of  spiritual  dis- 
cernment is  reverent  humility  in  the  pres- 
ence of  divine  mystery. 

The  same  spirit  should  influence  one's 
attitude  towards  the  Church.  The  man 
who  honestly  desires  to  help  his  brother 
man  will  hesitate  long  and  meditate  care- 
fully before  allowing  anything  but  really 
insurmountable  difficulties  to  hold  him  back 
from  fellowship  with  the  good  men  of  all 
ages  who  have  found  in  the  Christian  faith 
their  incentive  and  strength  for  service. 

After  all,  with  its  many  glaring  faults  and 
patent  inconsistencies,  the  Church  has  al- 
ways numbered  in  its  membership  the  real 
righting  strength  of  the  Christian  army. 
What  sort  of  a  soldier  is  he  who  falls  out 
of  the  ranks  now  and  never  answers  roll 
call?  On  the  whole,  the  people  who  want 
to  do  right  are  to  be  found  within  the  Chris- 
tian society.  Here,  then,  though  their 
faults  be  fully  recognized,  is  material  to 
work  with,  or  (if  you  will)  to  work  upon. 
Where     can    better    material    be    found? 


THE  DEMAND  FOE  EEALITY       179 

Despite  the  dead  load  of  respectability 
which  upon  occasion  hinders  the  advance  of 
the  kingdom,  in  the  main  the  God-fearing 
remnant  has  always  been  found  in  "  the 
communion  of  the  saints,"  the  fellowship  of 
the  faithful.  Here  at  least  are  followers  at 
hand  for  any  one  who  has  a  genius  for 
leadership. 

You  men  to  whom  we  appeal  are  men 
from  whom  we  have  a  right  to  look  for  such 
leadership.  Your  responsibility  for  service 
is  positive.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  you 
have  always  recognized  this.  We  ask  of 
you  not  merely  clear  thinking,  but  helpful 
action;  not  criticism  only,  but  constructive 
work.  Some  years  since,  Senator  Lodge 
pointed  out  that  the  chief  defect  of  modern 
culture  was  its  tendency  to  arouse  unduly 
the  critical  spirit,  manifesting  itself  in  a 
censoriousness  and  dissatisfaction  with 
things  in  general  coupled  with  an  incapacity 
for  "  team  work."  There  are  plenty  of  in- 
tellectual "  mugwumps  "  in  the  world,  and 
no  less  plentiful  are  the  spiritual  "  mug- 
wumps," who  pass  criticism  on  evils  which 
they  make  no  practical  effort  to  correct,  and 
because  of  minor  difficulties  and  objections 
hesitate  to  join  in  common  effort  to  remedy 
what  they  deplore.     Men  who  are  content 


180      THE  EXPEKIMENT  OF  FAITH 

to  be  mere  negatives  in  a  world  of  action  sin 
against  the  light.  If  those  who  by  reason 
of  large  opportunity  are  better  fitted  for 
leadership  leave  others  at  the  wheel  they 
have  no  right  to  complain  about  the  course 
over  which  they  are  driven.  We  are  debtors 
to  the  community.  We  ought  also  to  be 
faithful  citizens  of  the  kingdom.  In  both 
spheres  we  shall  have  to  work  with  imper- 
fect material  and  inefficient  assistance;  but 
it  is  our  business  to  overcome  obstacles. 
Men  glory  in  difficulties  that  test  their 
strength  in  the  affairs  of  every-day  work; 
why  run  away  from  like  difficulties  in  their 
work  for  God? 

It  all  resolves  itself  into  the  question 
whether  a  man  is  dead  in  earnest.  And 
that  shall  be  our  last  question  as  we  urge 
men  to  make  the  experiment  of  faith. 
Jesus  Christ  demands  reality.  Do  we  "  ring 
true"? 


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PRAYER,  DEVOTIONAL,  Etc. 


/  STUART  HO  LP  EN,  M.A.    Authtr  if  "The  Lift  »f  Full*  fai- 

■  pose,"  "The  Price  of  Power,"  etc 

The  Confidence  of  Faith 

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eternal.  The  troublous  days  through  which  the  world  is  now 
passing,  has  brought  perplexity  and  sorrow  to  many  loving 
hearts.  For  all  such,  as  well  as  for  believers  everywhere,  Mr. 
Holden's  new  book  breathes  a  message  of  solace  and  enheart- 
enment. 

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'  Toronto,  Canada 

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the  protective  grace  flung  around  the  believer,  enabling  one 
to  hold  fast  to  his  ideals.  — Christian  Work. 

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Through  Gates  of  Pearl 

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Scripture  in  a  satisfying  way  accomplished  by  few  books  writ- 
ten by  lay-writers." — Book  News. 

J.    M.    CAMPBELL,    D.D.     Author  of" Grow  Old  Alone  with  Af#" 


The  Heart  of  the  Gospel,"  etc. 


Prayer  in  Its  Present-Day  Aspects 

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Prayer  as  related  to  the  conception  of  God,  the  conception  of 
man,  bodily  healing,  spiritual  force,  natural  phenomena  and 
war,  are  some  of  the  issues  dealt  with  by  Dr.  Campbell.  A 
timely  and  valuable  treatise  on  the  highest  function  of  the  soul. 

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tfue,  practical,  useful  and  inspiring." — Christian  Work. 


ON  FAITH  AND  BELIEF 


HEN  AY  C.   MABIE,    P.P.  Author  of"  Method  of 

•  Soul  Wtnntng" 

The  Unshaken  Kingdom 

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expression  in  the  chapter  entitled  The  Ultimacy  of  Christian 
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When  Faiths  Flash  Out 

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The  World  to  Come 

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PA  VIP  A .  MURRA  Y,  P.  P.      Author  of  "Christian  Faith 

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prevelant  naturalistic  tendencies  in  Bible  interpretation  in  the 
homeland." — Christian   World. 

PAVIP  J.  BURRELL,  P.P. 

Why  I  Believe  the  Bible 

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faith,  cure  skepticism  and  convert  the  honest  enquirer. 


QUESTIONS  OF  THE  FAITH 


JAMES  H.  SNOJVPEN,  P.P. 

The  Psychology  of  Religion 

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ers, it  is  not  in  any  sense  an  ultra-academic  work.  Thi3  ia 
evidenced  by  the  fact  that  the  material  forming  it  has  been 
delivered  not  only  as  a  successful  Summer  School  course,  but 
in  the  form  of  popular  lectures,  open  to  the  general  public. 

WILLIAM  HALLOCK  JOHNSON,  PL  P.,  P.P. 

Professor  of  Greek  and  New  Testament  Literature  in  Lincoln  University,  P* 

The  Christian  Faith  under  Modern 
Searchlight 

The  L.  P.  Stone  Lectures,  Princeton.  Intro- 
duction by  Francis  L.  Patton,  D.D.    Cloth,  net  $1.25. 

The  faith  which  is  to  survive  must  -not  only  be  a  traditional 
but  an  intelligent  faith  which  has  its  roots  in  reason  and  ex- 
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works.  To  this  end,  the  author  examines  the  fundamentals 
of  the  Christian  belief  in  the  light  of  to-day  and  reaches  the 
conclusion  that  every  advance  in  knowledge  establishes  its 
sovereign  claim  to*  be  from  heaven  and  not  from  men. 

ANPREW  W.  ARCHIBALP,   P.P. 

Author  of  The  Bible  Verified,"  "The  Trend  of  the  Centuries,"  etc. 

The  Modern  Man  Facing  the  Old 
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from  what  may  be  called  a  Biblical  viewpoint.  That  is  to  say, 
the  author  by  its  illuminating  rays,  endeavors  to  find  eluci- 
dation and  solution  for  the  difficulties,  which  in  more  or  leffl 
degree,   perplex  believer  and  unbeliever   alike. 

NOLAN   RICE   BEST  Editor  of  « Th.  Ccntin**?* 

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BOOKS  FOR  MEN 


ROBERT  E.    SPEER,    P.P.  Merrick  Lectures,  1917, 

—  Ohio  Wesleyan  University 

The  Stuff  of  Manhood 

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Dr.  Speer  holds  that  the  moral  elements  o£  individual  char- 
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man  must  render  the  nation  is  to  illustrate  in  his  own  life 
and  character  the  moral  qualities  which  ought  to  character- 
ize the  State.  To  a  discussion  of  these  ideals  and  some  sug- 
gested methods  of  their  attainment,  Dr.  Speer  devotes  this 
Stirring,    uplifting    book. 

CORTLANP    MYERS,    P.P.     m  Minister  of 

»  "  Tremont  Temple,  Boston 

Money  Mad 

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money  without  doing  violence  to  his  conscience,  or  his  stand- 
ing as  a  member  of  the  Church  of  Christ. 

CHARLES  REYNOLPS  BROWN,  P.P.      Yale  University 

Five  Young  Men 

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home.  But  the  general  reader  of  almost  any  type,  will  be 
able  to  find  something  of  value  in  this  latest  volume  from  the 
pen  of  a  recognized  writer  of  light  and  leading. 

DEWITT  McMURRAY    of  the  Dallas  Daily  News 

The  Religion  of  a  Newspaper  Man 

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known  hiding-places  and  sprinkled  in  among  his  own  thoughts 
His  quotations — and  there  are  literally  thousands  of  them— 
are  exquisitely  timed  and  placed."— -Springfield  Republican. 

BURRIS  A.  JENKINS,  P.P. 

The  Man  in  the  Street  and  Religion 

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that  'the  man  in  the  street'  well  enjoy." — Boston  Globe. 


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